


Hale Derek

by Emmessann



Series: Hale Derek [1]
Category: Robin Hood (Traditional), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robin Hood, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Coercion, Mental Health Issues, Minors in Relationships, Multi, Possession, Threatened Animal Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-07 12:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 19
Words: 62,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4263303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emmessann/pseuds/Emmessann
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hale Derek and his pack of Merry Wolves bother and beggar the cruel Red King of Arcandrey, Peter Hale. Christopher of Argent goes on a mission to find out what has become of his daughter, Maid Allison, and finds much more than he imagined.</p><p>Or: what happened after I thought "Huh. 'John Little' = 'Little John' is kind of like 'Derek Hale' = 'Hale Derek', if you squint. I wonder if there's a story in that?" Many chapters later, there was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hale Derek, Forest Outlaw

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Medea for tireless cheerleading and to Zjo for a terrific beta
> 
> Warnings for the full story are in the tags. If you would like more detail on any warning, please let me know in the comments.
> 
> Sexual relationships between characters are alluded to but not depicted.  
> Some characters in relationships are 16-17.  
> The Teen Wolf teens' ages have been varied somewhat from canon.
> 
> Chapters marked "Hale Derek..." take place in the present moment of the story. Chapters marked "The Tale of..." take place at some other time, usually specified in the heading.

**Hale Derek, Forest Outlaw**

Christopher of Argent plunged his charger through the great stone gates of the castle wall, leaping off the horse as he came alongside a servant. “See to him in His Majesty’s stables,” he commanded. “He’s run full-tilt from the boundary gate.” Chris rolled his aching shoulders as he walked through the massive oaken doors into the castle keep. His close-linked chainmail was an accustomed weight, and well-balanced over his soiled black tabard. Had he spared a thought as he raced from his sentry position overseeing Arcandrey’s border he might have relieved himself of the burden, but the message from his sister had driven all thought from his head.

Without pausing to shake the dust from his clothes, Chris strode from the keep’s entrance into the Great Hall that occupied most of the stone tower’s ground floor. An arched opening showed the stairway up to the private chambers and storage that made up the upper stories. His eyes strayed to the recessed stone steps that led down to the dungeon below. He often felt he had spent his childhood running up and down them.

Chris looked past a strangely misshapen, tapestry-covered chest over to the large table that filled much of the room. The center of the table was built from dark sacrifice oak, stained almost black so that the silver inlay of three joined spirals seemed to glow from within. Around the table a dozen oak-and-silver chairs stood empty, along with many more prosaic ones.

His eyes fell on the woman lounging comfortably in a plush chair next to the oak-and-silver throne. As a mage, his sister could hardly rest easy on one of the Hale family's chairs; sacrifice oak would play havoc with her powers. It must vex her, Chris thought, to be forced to leave such splendor for others now that the original occupants were gone. All save the king.

He shook off the thought. "Kate," he called, waving the ragged parchment he had crushed in his fist as he read it over and over on his ride. "What has happened to Allison? What have you done to my daughter?"

"I’m known as _Mistress_ Kate here," she taunted. "You've been a long time as keeper of the boundary gate, brother, but I should think you'd remember your place. I'm the Royal Alpha's mage now, as Father was before me."

"And Master Deaton between you both," Chris said, unsurprised when her eyes snapped with anger. "What is this nonsense? How could Allison be carried off by outlaws? I trusted you with her care."

"And I love Allison beyond all things, you know that," Kate said. "But after Peter’s ascension, I could not protect her in the keep any better than you could at the gatehouse, with Deucalion's army attacking every season. You seem immune to injury, but what others have your luck?"

Chris flushed. Despite years spent in danger, with each fortuitous escape he felt more ashamed.

“I entrusted my niece to a noble family in the countryside, as you well know, and she has been at Martin Manor ever since. She was safe and sound until she chose to make a spectacle of herself."

Though Kate affected a serene air, Chris knew better than to trust it. She was flicking each of her long fingernails against the pad of her thumb, a nervous habit that betrayed her agitation. Chris had seen it often enough as he steadied her so she could peer into the high opening of their father's cell.

“When did she make a spectacle of herself? Why did I not hear of this?” Chris asked. In the constant threat of warfare he had been unable to leave his post. He and Allison had exchanged letters when they could, but of necessity, all had gone through Kate. He began to wonder what had been left out.

“She was magnificent,” a voice drawled. Chris looked up to see King Peter sweeping into the hall in full splendor. This was his first time to see the man since he was crowned Royal Alpha. He was dressed all in crimson, his fur-trimmed robe whispering softly against the wooden floor. The crown of golden oak leaves which Chris had last seen gracing Peter’s elder sister gleamed from the king's sandy hair. Chris bowed to greet His Majesty, and Peter dipped his eyes in acknowledgment. When he raised them, they glowed bright red for just a moment.

“It is terrible, too terrible what has happened to the dear girl,” Peter tutted. “But rest assured that everything will be set right. After all, you must want to secure Allison’s safety almost as much as I do.”

Chris was uncertain why His Majesty should be taking such an interest. He supposed he should be grateful if the Red King would devote his energies to getting Allison back. He glanced at Kate, who said with a twisted, secretive smile. “Allison was taken from a caravan guarded by the Royal Alpha’s most loyal soldiers. She was on her way to the palace to be wed to His Majesty.”

“What?” Chris was stunned, and gaped at his sister in betrayal. How could she not have alerted him to this?

“Believe me, brother, it is a very recent development,” Kate said dryly, in a tone that warned Chris to hold his tongue. Chris remembered himself. Peter was no mere figurehead; as Royal Alpha he was both literally and figuratively the most powerful person in Arcandrey. The one possible challenge to that power stood smirking at her elder brother.

Chris glanced to the side wall, over the cooking hearth, where the matrix-shades of a dozen Royal Mages across the centuries of the Hale Dynasty hung on display. Kate’s was there, showing her to be the most powerful mage in a generation. He wondered whether she ever chafed at Peter’s rule. The two of them represented a store of power beyond any an ordinary human like Chris could even dream of.

Peter turned a lovelorn smile on Chris that looked disturbingly genuine. “We would have sent for you for the ceremony, of course. Our love was sudden, but I knew Allison would be mine the moment I saw her. It was no surprise at all when I learned the extent of her magic."

Chris frowned in confusion. The king spoke as though Allison were a mage, which was certainly not the case. But before he could give voice to this thought, he almost choked as invisible fingers stopped his tongue in his mouth. He tried to hide his gag on a cough until he could find out privately why Kate would burn up one of her day’s sparks by making sure the Royal Alpha did not learn that Allison had no such power.

Kate spoke quickly. “She was not fully skilled in the arts when she left you, brother, but believe me, she has honed her talents well. I can promise you that,” she muttered as Chris’s tongue loosened.

“It was a gift from the Green and Silver that our darling Allison came here to enjoy the tournament on that blessed spring day,” Peter said piously.

Chris had to stop his tongue again, without Kate’s help. He wanted to ask Peter how he had enjoyed his peaceful spring day here in the safety of the castle while his soldiers fell guarding the country from attacks at the border. How tournaments and other merriments continued here, while countless peasants went hungry after giving over their taxes to pay for them.

But such questions would do noone any good, least of all Allison. Chris nodded to the king and turned to Kate. “When was the last time you knew Allison’s whereabouts?” he asked.

“More recently than you might think,” Kate said. “I would never take my dear niece’s safety lightly. When you first sent her to me I cast a heartfire upon her, which has alerted me to her good health ever since. Now that you are here, brother, I will share that gift with you.”

Kate pressed a hand to his chest, and Chris felt a sharp burning sensation that lingered when she released him. “The heartfire lets me know that you are safe wherever you may roam, Christopher. If I could I would have cast it on you years ago.”

Chris shifted in discomfort, but could see the sense of the spell. “What do you feel from Allison’s heartfire?” he asked.

Kate sighed. "Two months ago, King Peter chanced to see Allison at his spring tournament, and fell in love. He determined to marry her on the spot. She was overcome by the honor, as you can well imagine -- " Kate’s sharp glance warned Chris to say nothing " -- but she begged leave to return home with the Martins and prepare herself until the feast of Midsummer. The Royal Alpha granted her wish and she departed to make herself ready. I tracked her movements myself with the heartfire, making daily reports to the king. She spent the time quietly with her foster family. When Midsummer passed and I sensed her movement towards the castle, King Peter assembled a caravan of eight of his most trusted warriors."

"Including my champion," Peter said. "Jackson!" he called, and a young man dressed all in scarlet soon entered the Hall. "Come by here, for this matter much concerns you."

With an unbecoming pout on his handsome face, the man walked over to join them. Peter clapped him on the shoulder, and for a moment the scarlet courtier wavered slightly under the force of the Royal Alpha's grasp. Then he righted himself, and looked around at his company. "Your Majesty?"

"Explain to my mage and her brother what happened when you went to collect Maid Allison," Peter commanded.

Jackson nodded. "We set out just before Midsummer, at His Majesty's request," he explained. "We reached Martin Manor two days later. Maid Allison was fair pleased to see us, and directed us to load up her possessions in the coaches.  She asked a special favor of us, for she did not wish to part from her dear friend Ly-- Lady Martin. We packed up Lady Martin’s trunks as well, which were three times larger than Maid Allison’s," he grumbled, "and we were off."

As he spoke, Chris tried to take the measure of Allison’s failed defender. This latest royal champion was only of average height and a lithe build, though Chris supposed that he himself had looked similar the first year he had won the title. Though Jackson’s scarlet breeches, shirt, tabard and even mail made him look quite the popinjay, he had lasted several years in Peter’s court. Chris was unsure what to make of him.

"I set Finstock to ride ahead and scout for any dangers. I myself stayed directly alongside the ladies’ carriage, so it would be the best protected."

"Would that that were true," Peter murmured, and Jackson flushed. "Go on."

"All at once, I heard a rushing sound," Jackson said. "I was knocked soundly on the head and fell off my horse. I discovered later that the fiends shot blunted arrow shafts, heads dipped in tree sap. They did not kill my men, but they readily left us sleeping."

"A paltry effort from they who call themselves my best men," Peter grumbled.

Jackson turned to him. "The True Archer must have been among them, Sire. We were overcome." He continued. "When I awoke, Maid Allison was gone from the carriage, though Lady Lydia remained. She had concealed herself within her capacious luggage, and now rests safely inside the keep." Jackson scowled. "Finstock led half the squad to give chase to the outlaws, though they were too far ahead. Since my horse was fastest, I left Lady Martin with the rest of my men and rode Portia back to the castle as fast as I could to sound the alarm and alert Your Majesty to the trouble. And so the matter stands."

"Who are these outlaws who took my daughter?" Chris demanded. He turned back to Kate. "And why can’t your spell track her now?"

"I can tell you the second more easily," Kate said. She led the group over to the tapestry spread on the uneven trunks Chris had noted earlier. It was stitched with a map of Arcandrey, positioned  near the foot of the great table in view of the throne.

Kate smoothed the green and brown fabric so Chris could see the top border done in blue and silver. She gestured with a spark and the threads of the tapestry began to move.

"This map shows the furthest extent of my reach," she said. "It goes as far north as our boundary at the River Twiene.” With the slight shifts of the blue and green threads, Chris imagined he could see the currents. “You can see your gatehouse here," she pointed to the northwest, where the building’s flat stones were picked out in threads of pale gray. "And here, the bridge into Werlanden that you defend." She pointed to the ancient white stones arching across the water, which disappeared off the top of the tapestry. "Deucalion has a spell on his territory, we cannot map it. My own spell is strongest around the castle grounds. Here in the keep, we see more detail." She stroked the gray octagon at the center of the castle yard, and the threads of the roof parted to reveal the wood and rushes beneath their feet.

Chris marveled at the detail that showed even the great table with its joined spirals, when his eyes fell upon a large embroidered knot of  pale, lustrous gray. It seemed to pulsate slightly, to a rhythm he felt within. His eyes met his sister's.

"That's right, brother," she said softly. "That is your heartfire. I can track anyone who carries that spell from here. Unless…"

She pointed at the wild forest that separated the castle and its lands from the massive river. "From the keep, my powers are at their most potent out to here," she said, gesturing to the inner edge of the forest. "If Allison were alive anywhere within these lands, I would know exactly where. But my reach grows weaker as it approaches the boundary," she said, gesturing to the River Twiene. "Even so, there should be a faint trace of Allison."

"Instead," she said, gesturing where the river was widest and wildest, "I felt her heartfire suddenly go out, just here."

"Does that not mean she is dead?" Chris asked anxiously.

Kate looked sympathetic. "It is possible, but it felt more like a curtain had been lowered, than a light extinguished. I cannot explain it more clearly, and I do not know what it means."

"But what do you think?" Chris asked, staring at the spot where his dearest heart had vanished. The threads of the tapestry in that area seemed tangled, green and silver swirling in chaos, craggy rocks blending into water.

"I think," Kate sighed. "I think Allison was taken by the most notorious outlaw in Arcandrey, who leads a pack of knaves to lay waste to the forest. He had a heartfire once, and I have felt it disappear in a similar manner. Indeed, he has disappeared and reappeared from my sight many times, always at this same wild, violent place in the river. He has evaded every trap, but he certainly is not dead. Allison may not be, either."

Chris’s mind raced as he tried to penetrate the mystery. "It sounds like this rogue may have some sort of hiding place. Could that be where Allison is?"

Kate smiled. "I think it is very possible, dear Christopher. If you would rescue your daughter, you must locate the outlaw’s hiding place and find your way inside. Only then can you know for certain whether Allison is trapped within. You must enter his lair, and reveal the truth."

Kate held up a small stone and placed it in Chris’s palm as the king and his champion watched. He cradled it carefully, familiar with the natural form of his sister’s magic. It was polished like a river rock but pellucid as an egg white, and unnaturally colored. The size of a sugared comfit, it gleamed in his hand like a solidified lump of burgundy wine. He closed his hand over it carefully, then dropped it into the pouch she held out for him which he tied to his belt. "What do I do with it?" he asked.

“You must seek the bandits out,” she said. “Persuade one, charm him, or hold a knife to his throat, I leave that to your judgment. But no matter how, you must gain entrance to their secret lair. Your daughter’s life depends upon it.”

Chris nodded soberly. “What am I to do with this when I find them?” Peter’s champion looked keen to hear Kate’s instructions as well.

“Wait until you are inside, alone with the bandit chief, and then cast this frozen strike upon the fire. Its magic will reveal all truths and dispel all lies. Only this can reveal the truth of Allison’s fate.”

“How am I to find him?” Chris asked. His eyes were drawn again to the tapestry, at the wide river current where Allison disappeared. As he watched, a single green stitch appeared from nowhere and slithered alongside the Twiene. He pressed down upon the cloth and felt the thread rasp against the callused ridges of his finger.

“Exactly, Christopher,” said Kate. “You have him already. Now you must go and find him in truth.”

“Jackson will accompany you,” Peter added.

The knight gawped. “The last time I went after them, I lost all of the coin from the autumn tournament!” Jackson whined. “It costs money to keep Portia fit for these royal missions.”

“I will give you the coin,” the Royal Alpha growled. He pulled a small pouch from his belt and tossed it to his courtier, who snatched it from the air with surprising speed. It jingled in his hand.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Jackson said humbly. “It won’t go to waste.”

Chris kept his finger on the green thread, as though by doing so he could pin down his enemy. “How will I recognize him?” he asked, impatient to leave.

Both Peter and Kate smiled. “Don’t worry, brother, you’ve met,” Kate soothed him. “Six years ago, just before your troubles began with Deucalion?”

Chris was thunderstruck. “He’s dead,” he croaked. “I thought the Desquamic Plague…” He remembered himself and looked at Peter, unable to take his eyes off the man’s rigid face.

The king nodded. “It is true that the plague carried off many of my family on that terrible day,” he said. “It seemed prudent to allow the peasants to believe the entire family was wiped out by the disease. After all, I myself had it, and only survived by inheriting Talia’s Royal Alpha powers.”

The aftermath of the plague had devastated the kingdom, Chris knew. He had known the Hales suffered from a mysterious illness -- one which affected werewolves and humans alike, a rarity -- but had been too busy fighting off Deucalion’s first attack to investigate himself.

“But now, Chris, I share a state secret because of my love for your daughter. Many in my family -- my sister, her elder daughters, even my own son -- they did not die of the plague. The disease sowed instability and a madman took advantage. While we were locked away, here in the keep, the Hales were betrayed and murdered in a futile attempt for the Royal Alpha power. The killer escaped. I thought he would never be brought to justice. I believed he was gone for good until I learned he leads this most troublesome bandit clan.”

Chris was stunned. “You speak of…”

Peter nodded decisively. “My nephew. He took everything of value from me, and now he has done the same to you.” The Royal Alpha swept the tapestry away. The covered boxes Chris had taken for trunks were actually three fine coffins. He stared down at them, recognizing well-fitted mountain ash and sacrifice oak.

“These await him and his fellows. I gaze upon them daily until they are rightfully occupied,” Peter spat. “I charge you with this, Christopher of Argent. Go and find him and your daughter and bring them back to me. Maid Allison will know bliss as the queen and Alpha Consort of Arcandrey. And the merciless fury of destiny will fall upon the outlaw Derek Hale.”

 


	2. The Tale of the Murder of the Alpha Consort

_Six years earlier…_

Christopher of Argent stood on the ramparts of the massive gatehouse that was his home. The long-forgotten builders had cleverly constructed the building to straddle the main road that led to the boundary between Arcandrey and the outer wilderness of Werlanden. A traveler upon the road might turn before the bridge to follow the line of the river Twiene, or stay on the main road to cross into enemy territory. In the past, the bridge was known as the only safe crossing between Arcandrey and Werlanden to traverse the wild waters of the river. Now the crossing was far less safe, and it was Chris's job as keeper of the gate to watch the activity from the enemy side.

Chris had held this post for the last four years. Guarding an uncertain, silent border was stressful compared to castle life, but solitude had its pleasures. Though the royal family was cordial, Chris had often felt out of place in the close community of the Arcandrey keep. His recent prestige as the Royal Alpha's champion was balanced against years as the lonely human son of a traitorous mage.

Only a few had bridged the boundaries of class and notoriety back then, mostly a handful of soldiers and a young lord nearly as lonely as he. Here, the shared work of the boundary gate made for strong friendships with few class distinctions, to Chris's pleasure.

Even now, he stood next to his closest friend and second in command, the werewolf Boyd. There were times when Chris gave thanks that Boyd and Erica had been forced to flee Werlanden and take refuge in Arcandrey. In their gratitude, they provided their services and their knowledge of their former homeland and Royal Alpha.

The two soldiers seldom spoke casually of such weighty matters, but with their royal visitor approaching, Chris indulged in voicing his private hopes. "I do not trust Deucalion, but he has been quiet for some time. Perhaps he had given up on his supposed destiny to merge our countries by taking us over."

Boyd shrugged. "The last time Werlanden was noisy was when Erica and I hove across the River Twiene, begging sanctuary for our freshly yellowed eyes. I can bide with the Demon Alpha’s silence for as long as he holds his tongue."

"Of course, your arrival was before my time," Chris replied. "When I first came to lead the gatehouse with Victoria as our mage, Allison was a babe just out of swaddling. I would not have taken my family from the castle then save for Talia’s behest.” The Royal Alpha had wanted a show of strength at the border, and so deployed her most recent champion to oversee the troops. “She bade me to come here after Deucalion sent word demanding the return of your heads. How a ruler can be so cruel to his own kind, I’ll never understand."

Boyd chuckled grimly. "But we are not his own kind," he said. "You know how he is. Whether 'tis an unfortunate babe wrenched from its noble weremother’s arms, or two human peasants savaged by a new-minted Alpha gone feral --" Boyd’s lip curled "-- yellow and blue must die, while only red may thrive. The Demon Alpha has ruled for so long that it is part of their nature, there."

"I thank the Green and Silver that Arcandrey is not the same," Boyd went on. "Thanks to the Royal Alpha Talia, and to him who now approaches." He nodded at a plume of dust rising far down the main road

"Yes, Acandrey is fortunate in its noble dynasty," Chris agreed. "Rainier himself is a fine example of the Hales’ willingness to join with humans. Tis said most expected him to ask Talia for the bite after they wed.” Gerard had often raved of it, though whether he thought Rainier a fool for refusing such power, or a fool for marrying a ‘beast’ in the first place, Chris could never tell. “But I believe he was wise to preserve his humanity, marrying into the royal circle yet maintaining his position as an outsider. He did well, to broker our treaty with Deucalion and gain you a home."

"And to make his annual inspection a condition of the peace. Why, the Alpha Consort’s visit is the highlight of our social calendar," Boyd said dryly.

"And now we gain the added amusement of the elder Hale children," Chris agreed. "Perhaps he will bring Lady Laura again, or favor us with another."

At that moment, a stone the size of a goose egg flew straight at Chris’s face. Boyd snatched it from the air, and cocked an ear downwards. "She says to convey her apologies," he murmured. "She was aiming for me."

"Erica, I trust that as far as you can throw your husband," Chris snipped to the air, knowing his fiercest soldier heard.

Boyd smiled. "You haven’t seen her boost me over our enemy’s wall, then. The height is most impressive." Chris knew that Boyd and Erica occasionally crept into their old home to ease their sorrows, despite the danger if they should be caught.

Chris pursed his lips with a mock frown. "Climbing that wall is forbidden except in emergencies."

"Did I say over the the wall?" Boyd said hastily. “I meant over the pantry wall, raiding for jam. Anyway, she says you'll be pleased to know that, this year, Rainier has brought along his eldest son.”

"Lord Derek will be joining us?" Chris smiled. "No doubt Allison will be smitten. He was a comely boy when I last saw him."

"But that was years ago. He must be almost a man grown, now," Boyd offered. “Fifteen...no, sixteen, is he not?”

"Can he be so old? The staunch lad who cheered me on in the tournaments?" Chris scoffed. "Next you’ll be telling me I’m a tired old man at twenty-seven."

"I value my skin too highly," Boyd said solemnly.

***

Chris greeted his guests in his role of head Keeper of the Boundary Gate and its sentries, and gave them time to shake the dust from their clothing. Once they had refreshed themselves in Chris’s private chamber, he invited the Alpha Consort and his son to join him on their formal stroll to examine the border.

Rainier was a handsome man, graying but still powerful. Like Chris, Rainier had been a tournament champion in his day -- popular legend held that he had caught Talia’s eye by dedicating his first win to her. Derek looked much like his Alpha mother, his deep-set, parti-colored eyes giving him an exotic, but slightly hunted look. Chris could still find the best of his father in the son’s strong jaw and broadening shoulders. A most striking youth, Chris thought ruefully, just on the cusp of manhood. He supposed without much hope that perhaps Allison, at nine, was still too young for such a specimen to attract her notice.

They walked atop the gatehouse wall, at first, looking out at the Werlanden gate across from them and the wild outer forest of Arcandrey behind. Rainier made amiable conversation, as always, though his son seemed oddly distant and out of sorts. Chris remembered him as having a sweet disposition as a child, and wondered if he had changed with age, or if this was merely the passing moodiness of youth.

“If you look over the western edge of the wall, you can see the precise beginning of the boundary path we are about to inspect,” Chris said.

“It doesn’t look like much, it’s half-overgrown,” Lord Derek objected. “Why’s it need inspecting?”

“The path is fifty miles long, lad, and they have a company of less than a hundred,” his father remonstrated. “Would you turn the full contingent of soldiers to gardeners?”

“Isn’t it the kingdom’s responsibility to maintain the roads?” Derek asked his father, somewhat snidely.

“The boundary path is not precisely a road,” Chris explained. “I doubt even twenty travelers traverse its length in a year. It shows us where we differ from Werlanden. We mark it for the memory of what it is, and where it is. It has been so since time immemorial.”

“I recall there was once a tradition of beating all the boys at every milestone, to make sure they would remember,” Rainier said lightly. “Perhaps it ought to be revived.”

Lord Derek rolled his eyes, unfazed by his father’s threat. “We are to walk the path there, starting at the stones?” He pointed twenty feet below.

“Not all of it, but some distance,” Chris said.

“Meet you down there, then,” Derek said, and vaulted over the gatehouse wall. Chris couldn’t stop himself from leaning out to make sure the young werewolf had landed safely, while his father showed no such concern.

“Show-off,” he said fondly, and Chris could hear Lord Derek’s laughter below as the two humans made their way to the stairs.

With the gatehouse at their backs, they strode along the narrow path. At first the sunlight beamed down upon them, but as the path entered the forest along the river the air turned shady and cool.

Chris observed the relationship between father and son closely, trying to suss out the cause of the strain he sensed between them. The tension seemed small enough; the two were lighter together than he had ever been with Gerard. Still, Rainier frequently remonstrated Derek with trifling remarks which Chris thought shielded a deeper concern. For his part, Derek snapped back as if irate with growing pains.

They strode along the narrow path with trees close on each side. To their right they could hear the rushing current of the Twiene, and caught regular glimpses of the sunlight on the water as they progressed.

When they had walked some distance into the forest, Lord Derek gave a low whistle, turning toward the water. “That’s the largest oak I’ve ever seen. The grove in the castle yard has none to compare.”

“You noticed!” Chris said, surprised. “Most of our company overlook it unless I point it out to them. I don’t know how they can miss a great trunk like that.”

“Is it a sacrifice oak?” Rainier said, squinting into the distance.

Derek clucked. “Of course it is! Can’t you see the leaves are showing silver? Why is it showing silver, I thought they only did that to announce the winter?” he asked Chris, leading his father over to pat the enormous trunk.

“Yes, thank you, Derek, I see it very well now,” Rainier said. “We are a way off our well-worn path, you know. How do you tame the undergrowth so far into the forest?”

"My company and I walk all along its length twice a year, west in early spring and east into the Woodlands in autumn chill, to maintain the line," Chris explained. "The journey takes several days in each direction. We even lead the livestock so their hooves will cut up the sod."

“That’s clever, renewing the path like that,” Derek said, and Chris smiled. After years of inspections, the explanations were really for the lad’s benefit and not his father’s. It was pleasant to have a fresh audience.

“What would you do, if you needed to keep up a fifty-mile border that was seldom traveled?” Rainier asked.

Derek rolled his eyes at his father, seemingly used to such quizzes. “I could run all along it with my claws out.” He mimed a four-legged trot. “If I really ran full tilt, I could probably trim up the whole path by myself in a day.”

Chris chuckled. “A perfect example of the fundamental difference between our kinds,” he said.

“What? That werewolves have claws,” Derek extended his playfully, "and humans don’t?”

“That you have one obvious solution to many problems, and so you expect it to solve them all,” Chris said. ”Tis something I have thought much upon, after spending years watching Boyd and Erica peel every fruit, dig every hole, gut every fish and, in Erica’s case, pick every nose in the same way,” he explained, and laughed at Lord Derek's disgust.

“Tis the way of werewolves, is it not?” Rainier asked with interest. “Their nature leans toward the Green.”

“Ah, the Green and Silver. As a human, this is also something I have thought much upon,” Chris said.

“Why so?” asked Lord Derek, puzzled. “Werewolves stand for the Green, mages for the Silver -- humans don’t even enter into it.” Chris caught Rainier’s sharp look toward his son. With some confidence that the human father would be glad for his werewolf son’s education on this point, he pressed on with his thoughts.

“Humans greatly outnumber both in this country, and even in Werlanden,” he explained gently. “Yet in our shared religion, we may as well not exist. We are not afforded the dignity of choosing our destinies, we are only trifles for the powerful.”

“That’s nonsense,” Lord Derek said, looking upset. “No one can choose their destiny. Werewolves, mages or humans -- we must all walk the path the Green and Silver give to us. They stand for our greatest strengths.”

“Ah, I am not sure the Green and the Silver refer solely to their counterpart’s greatest strengths,” Chris mused. “I think they also address their weaknesses.”

Lord Derek made a face at what he clearly felt to be Chris’s folly. “How can having the strength and endurance of a great oak be a weakness to werewolves?”

“Not a weakness, exactly,” Chris said. “More of --”

“A limitation,” Rainier rumbled, and Derek turned shocked eyes to his father. Chris decided to quiet the mood.

“Look here,” he said, pulling a coin from his pouch. “The Arcandrean symbol shows the Green and the Silver. The Oak and the Lightning. The Strength and the Strike, does it not?”

“Yes,” the lad said cautiously, tracing the lightning-struck oak. “Mages have the Strike, one great burst of power. Then they are vulnerable until they recover. Plus whatever Sparks they may possess,” he added. “The Strike hits the oak, and the great tree withstands that which would kill other living creatures. Like the mighty oak, only the werewolf is strong enough to endure the mage’s force.” He stared at the coin, rubbing a thumb over the stamped lightning bolt.

“Usually they do,” Rainier told him gently. “Usually the werewolf survives the mage’s force. Not always.” A look passed between father and son that Chris did not understand.

“Anyway, I hate feeling left out of something so important as my own religion,” Chris told them brightly. “I want my daughter to respect our strengths as humans, too. I want her to believe that she need not passively accept the fate she is given. So I created my own symbol, one to encompass us all. I mean no disrespect,” he added hastily, wondering if Rainier would take offense.

The Alpha Consort shrugged. “Werewolves have ruled this land since its foundation. The Hale Dynasty stretches back almost as far as the forgotten ancients who built your gatehouse. I doubt Talia would see threat or offense in your explorations. Here, let us see,” he said curiously.

“I only wished to have a place,” Chris explained, fishing under his collar. “We can share the silver with the mages and the wooden shaft with the oak tree,” he added.

From under his shirt, Chris pulled out a large silver arrowhead on a red leather thong, and passed it to the Hales. Rainier looked at it with pleasure. “You cast the silver yourself?” he asked, admiring the arrowhead’s mirror finish.

“Carved the mold, then cast the silver, then burnished it to a high shine,” Chris said. He flipped it over to show them a roughly hewn relief-molding of the same oak and lightning strike stamped on the coin, now framed within the silver arrowhead.

For the first time, Lord Derek looked at Chris with something like the awe he had once given to him as the Royal Alpha’s champion. “I can’t believe you made this yourself!” he enthused.

Chris laughed, not unkindly. “And that is because you are a werewolf,” he said. “What do werewolves have that humans do not? Innumerable assets that make work and toil easier. The strength to survive unimaginable force. But seldom the desire to invent more than they are, and why should they, when they can endure all that there is? Whereas we humans,” he nodded at Rainier, “poor humans who are born with no claws, fangs or magic, what can we do? We must strive to improve.” Chris whipped his small crossbow from his belt, and shot three swift bolts into a distant tree across the water. He knew young Derek could appreciate his aim as all hit a single knot, even if his father’s eyes might fail him.

Derek’s eyes bulged. “How did you shoot so quickly?” he said in wonder, looking at Chris’s unique crossbow. With a curious finger, he gently touched the wooden casing to which Chris had sewn three multicolored arrows worn from practice. A mechanism moved the case along the bow to load each bolt almost more quickly than Chris could pull the trigger, while a second mechanism reset the bow.

“With some modifications of my own devising,” Chris said, sliding a second trio of bolts home and holding the bow out for the Hales’ inspection. “It took many months of failure before the first hint of success, and still my daughter prefers the longbow for practice.  And this is what I mean. Not even a mage can survive long on the gains from magic arrows. A mage could replicate my trick once, perhaps twice in a day and then be spent. Even Deaton could only shoot thrice; my sister may spend five, and no more. Like the lightning strike, their power can never be stored, only spent and slowly replenished.”

Rainier nodded. “And that is how it is. An archer must practice his craft for years, even a royal champion. But in so doing he stores his power in his bow and in his arm, masters his weapon so it becomes an extension of his will. After that he can shoot every arrow he can carry, each as true as the first.”

Derek looked thoughtful, and Chris stared at the young lord with an urgency even he did not fully understand. While no one believed that the gentle lad would ever become the Royal Alpha -- odds in the gatehouse gaming hall rated Lady Laura sixteen-to-one, and even brash Lord Peter and bold young Lady Cora ranked higher than Talia’s peaceable eldest son -- he would, one day, stand at the very heart of the kingdom. If he could do so with wisdom, and temperance, and understanding of his human brethren, all might prosper.

Though their ages were far apart -- closer now, as Derek neared manhood -- Chris had always had a soft spot for the young werewolf. When Chris served as Rainier’s squire, Derek escaped his nurse to scamper after him on the practice yards, hiding behind his idol’s knees while watching the clash of swords or quarterstaffs with wide eyes. As Chris readied for his first tournament, nine-year-old Derek proudly presented him his shield, polished to a mirror shine. Most of all, Chris remembered their quiet communion on Derek’s twelfth birthday, his steady presence while Chris’s emotions about the death of his father roiled and crashed. Derek’s solemn empathy had impressed Chris even then, and he had wondered what the boy would become. This brash sixteen-year-old was an unpleasant surprise.

Chris pulled back from his reverie as the Alpha Consort continued, taking the arrowhead back from his son and returning it to Chris.

“You speak with wisdom,” Rainier rumbled. “As the wolf has her endurance and the mage his force, we humans must get by on perseverance. We know we must strive and fail again and again, until finally our shots land true. In its humble way, it holds its own kind of magic.  It is my dearest wish that someday my son will understand this.”

***

The pale stone walls of the gatehouse hall rang with laughter as servants, soldiers and royalty alike enjoyed a hearty repast along the long wooden tables. For once there was nearly as much beef as fish at hand, in honor of their guests. While Chris enjoyed the fare the Twiene provided, he also enjoyed the variety this day, tender cuts braised with the choice mushrooms Boyd and Erica sniffed out in the forest.

Though the company cook normally produced his goods in quantity over quality, royalty seemed to inspire him to newly creative heights. Chris smiled as three hen’s eggs, shells still intact, were set before him, the Alpha Consort and Lord Derek.

“Where are the rest of them?” Allison piped up from down the table. “I like eggs.”

Chris was about to offer her a taste of his, after he remonstrated her impertinence, when Lord Derek spoke. “These are very special eggs, so perhaps there weren’t enough to share. But you may have mine,” he offered, and watched as the dainty egg cup was passed hand to hand until it landed before Allison in her accustomed position, wedged between Boyd and Erica.

Allison turned wide eyes up to Boyd. “Help me open it?” she implored. Chris rolled his eyes as he watched his second in command reach for his knife as if to tap the shell. When Allison’s face fell, Boyd laughed and used his claws, giving the little minx the show she’d hoped for. All eyes were on Allison as she tasted the treat.

She put the egg cup down in shock. “It’s fish! Why is it fish, I thought eggs were from chickens?” She looked at Derek. “Did you know it was fish?”

“I think he could smell it,” Erica whispered so the company could hear. “Werewolves don’t always like the same foods as humans.” Boyd and Erica had no children of their own, and had grown very close to Allison in the years since Victoria had died.

“Our cook does something similar with boiled almond milk and nut paste for the yolk,” Rainier said, happily eating his. “I shall tell him of your version -- oh-ho, with salmon roe in the center, very clever!”

All in all, it was a light-hearted evening for the gatehouse company. Lord Derek seemed more relaxed than he had been earlier in the day. He listened avidly as Chris and Rainier exchanged jocular stories for the group’s amusement.

“Talia insisted I pin her werewolf adviser in the wrestling pit before she would ask for my hand,” Rainier chuckled. “Otherwise, she could not trust my determination. It was as you say, Chris -- all brute force, no practiced technique. He was on the straw in less than a minute. She was mine by the end of the day.”

“Really?” Lord Derek asked eagerly. “Who did you pin?”

“Your uncle Peter,” Rainier chuckled. “I don’t believe he’s ever quite forgiven me.”

“I remember the prodigious roar that spelled the end of my last tournament,” Chris said, and Rainier chortled.

“Who was that?” Erica asked. From her wicked tone, Chris was sure she already knew.

Chris smiled affectionately at Derek, who had gone a bit sullen. “No champion ever had a more staunch supporter than Lord Derek, here. No knight ever had a louder cheering section than the young lord watching the games.”

Rainier laughed. “For three years the royal box was ever full of “Hurrah Chris! Hail Christopher of Argent!” he imitated in a high, boyish voice. Derek flushed.

“Until the final match,” Chris said, “when I secured my position as the Royal Alpha’s champion for the third year in a row, and the entire crowd was stunned by the cry of  --”

“HAIL, CHRIS,” Rainier intoned in a sepulchrally deep tone. “Followed by -- “

“The most prodigious bass roar the stands had ever heard,” Chris concluded. The company laughed, when Chris realized that Lord Derek was blushing to the tips of his ears, and felt sorry for making sport of him. “I have never forgotten your devotion that day, both on and off the field” he said more gently.

But it was the gatehouse cook who brought Derek’s salvation by announcing the sweets course. “Oh!” the young lord cried, jumping to his feet. “I forgot --“ He sought his father’s permission and ran from the table at his nod.

Chris smiled after his frantic haste. “He is an amiable lad,” he said quietly. “‘Twas good of you to bring him to us.”

“Yes, a dear boy, but at that age where children most worry their parents,” Rainier sighed. Then he smiled down the table at Allison. “Your father probably thought that you were past the difficult years some time ago,” he said to the nine-year-old. “But trust me, Chris, the trouble comes.back again. Derek and I will have much to discuss on our way home,” he muttered.

Chris wasn’t sure what to make of the private concerns evident in the man’s eyes. “I trust that all is well at the castle?” he asked tentatively.

Rainier sighed. “In truth I almost postponed our trip. The youngest children have been ill for over a week. At first, Deaton assured us it was a minor ague they would soon shake off. When they did not mend, your sister stepped in to assist him from her role as Peter’s mage. Together they convinced me that we should travel, but...I do not know,” Rainier said. “Talia has always relied on Deaton, yet now seemed shaken in his judgment. I did not like to leave.”

“My sister plies her services well, I hope,” Chris said politely.

“Aye,” Rainier said darkly. “Sometimes a bit too well, perhaps.” He broke off at the sight of his son carrying a large, flat box. “Ah! A treat to share with our pleasant hosts, eh?”

Derek placed the box before Chris, who opened it with a flourish to general applause. The box was full to bursting with all manner of sumptuous sweetmeats from the castle kitchens. There was even, Chris noted, a partition marking those treats which were most enticing to werewolves.

“Oh!” Derek said, espying one of these. “I didn’t know Cook had made any vinegar kisses.” He cut off abruptly, coloring as he realized his rudeness.

“Do you like them, lad?” Chris said. “Then take it. I do not believe any in our company have a taste for the puckersome things.” Derek wavered, shyly, but Boyd nodded to him.

“Not even Erica and I have much liking for them,” Boyd said. “We were bitten, not born, so some of our tastes were set as humans. There’s more than enough here to content us ‘til midwinter.”

“Right, and most humans don’t like the feeling of a gush of hot vinegar jelly burning through their tongues,” Erica said, reaching for a sugared almond instead.

Hesitantly, Derek took up the sparkling white comfit, and held it to the light so all could see the burgundy center gleaming within its sugar cage. “They are Friar Kate’s favorite,” he said, “and she’s human.”

“I’ve long thought that point was debatable,” Chris replied, chuckling. “Mages develop quite rarefied tastes. At any rate, it always made sense for Kate to enjoy them. As the doctrine of signatures tells us, like calls to like.” He waited until the lad had popped the treat in his mouth and crunched down on the shell. “Tart to tart.”

Chris, Rainier and the company laughed heartily at the scandalized look on Lord Derek’s reddening face.

***

Though the company was merry for the rest of the evening, Chris observed that Derek had fallen quiet, sometimes looking sharply for the source of any minor noise. He sat stiffly, left leg over right knee and right wrist clutched in left hand. Chris might have thought he was demure save for the way he quietly extended and retracted his right claws, almost like a pulse.

The boy hissed, and Chris looked up to see Erica and Boyd glancing sharply at him. From what Chris could tell, Lord Derek had pricked his own thumb with one of his claws and drawn blood. He seemed to sense the other werewolves’ gaze, and recalled himself. “Sorry,” he muttered, then returned, Chris thought, to observe the healing of his skin.

When supper was cleared away and the servants were laying out fresh rushes for the company’s bedtime, Chris and Rainier repaired to Chris’s own chamber, where the Hales would sleep, to continue their talk of threats and strategy. The bed with its great oak frame had always seemed overly grand to Chris, who was just as likely to sleep downstairs with the rest of the gatehouse. Still, it was useful when honored guests appeared. Derek followed them, as silent as before. The boy threw himself on a chair near the door, while Chris and Rainier stood on the other side of the chamber, huddled over plans spread on Chris's great table. He was absently flicking each of his claws against the pad of his thumb in turn. Chris was not sure why he took note of such a prosaic habit, but something about it struck him.

“You do not need a mage?” Rainier asked him.

Chris waved a hand. “Only if the chosen person could fit into our company the way Victoria did,” he said. He thought a moment. “I mean -- not as my wife, but --”

Rainier chuckled. “I know what you mean. Yours is a small, but peaceable, kingdom. You must think well before you risk someone disturbing it.”

“In truth, the peace here has not been disturbed since before my time, when Boyd and Erica arrived,” Chris said. “I do not trust Deucalion, but after years of observation I think I know him a little, now. He claims it is his destiny to take over Arcandrey, yet he sits quiet. I do not believe he will act without provocation.”

“We must pray he does not find it, then,” Rainier said. “Talking of rash acts, there is something I hope to discuss with you in the morning. I witnessed an…untoward event shortly before we left the castle, and I believe you may be uniquely placed to have some insight.” His eyes asked Chris to understand something the younger man unfortunately did not.

At this, Lord Derek looked up sharply. “Speak in ciphers all you want,” he said in an unpleasant tone. “I’m not stupid. I know what you saw.”

“Derek!” Rainier scolded. “This is what I mean about the difficult years. My apologies, Chris. My son and I have had a long and trying day. Perhaps it is best for us to finally end it.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Chris said, and bowed his way out the door.

***

A few hours later, Chris lay awake on his pallet in the gatehouse hall. He had been jostled from sleep by an odd dream of his sister Kate wandering through the gatehouse, smirking and blowing wine-red kisses at everyone she passed. Chris had not seen his sister in six years, and was not sure why he dreamed of her now. She was a loved presence in his life, but never a reassuring one.

Chris lurched to full attention as a cry of inhuman agony split the night, rousing many of his fellows. The sound had come from his chambers. Gathering his wits, Chris raced up the stone steps two at a time. Boyd and Erica following directly on his heels. They stopped in the doorway, stunned at the ghastly sight.

Rainier lay sputtering, flat on his back on the bed. Derek crouched over him, one broad hand clinging to the oaken headboard, the other wrapped across his father’s throat. At first, Chris thought he saw murder done, before realizing he stared at the aftermath of one. Rainier’s throat had been torn open and Chris’s battle-trained eye could see that too much blood had already soaked the mattress for the man to survive. The young lord seemed desperate to try, however, as he clasped his hand against the wound as if to slow the blood running through his fingers.

“Derek!” Chris said, shocked. “By the Green and Silver, what has happened here?”

Face awash in grief, Derek looked towards him, the tears already flooding his eyes. “It was -- it was --” he said, then stopped as if he could hardly speak. “I -- I --” The boy seemed tongue-tied from shock.

A final, horrible gurgle escaped Rainier, and he stilled. Chris could tell from the change in Boyd’s posture that the heartbeat must be gone.

Derek let out a noisy wail, followed by a sob. Chris watched the absolute horror of the moment roll across the lad’s face as he let go of the headboard to cover his eyes with his unbloodied hand. But then, as he looked down at his father’s body, the noise cut off. Derek’s face shifted, as if a mask had fallen smoothly into place. He pulled his gory hand from his father’s torn throat and drew away to wipe it on the bedding. Chris supposed he was gathering his control.

“It was an assassin who crept into the room,” he said. “A strange alpha; I saw the glow of his eyes. I awoke just as he stood over the Alpha Consort and struck, then he ran out that way.” Derek pointed at an arrow-slit that could just fit a slim man.

Boyd cleared his throat delicately. “Begging your lordship’s forgiveness, but I do not scent any foreign air in the room.” Erica nodded.

“Fools!” Lord Derek snarled. “Flea-bitten idiots! He tore out through that window, he must have come in the same way. Any mage could have masked his scent. Why don’t you use your stolen senses and sniff him out there?”

Erica went over to look, and soon held up a scrap of fabric wedged in the sill. The cloth was soaked with blood, but the light of Werlanden blue shone through. “We recognize the origin, though the blood has overpowered the villain’s own scent,” she said, giving Boyd a dark look.

Boyd still looked troubled, but nodded. “We will make haste over the wall and catch this assassin on the Werlanden side.” The two of them ran from the room.

Chris looked at Derek and his strange calm. “In your father’s stead we are yours to command, Lord Derek,” he said with deference. “I can recommend a course of action.”

Derek waved him off. “That will not be necessary,” he said. “You know this means war between our countries. You must lead our defense from here. I am sorry to leave you in such danger, Christopher. I would not, if I could choose otherwise.” His calm in grief made him seem older than his years.

“It’s hardly by your choice,” Chris protested, with a sidelong glance at Rainier’s body.

Derek followed his look but came no closer. “I must return home,” he said, “to bear news of what has happened back to my dearest mother.”

“We’ll saddle the swiftest horse for you,” Chris agreed. He was turning to leave when a strong hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“No need,” Derek said, and five claws popped out, just barely pricking Chris’s skin. “I have a faster way.” With that, he hurried from the room. Moments later, Chris caught sight of him through the arrow-slit, running at top speed on all fours along the road back to Arcandrey Castle.

For a moment Chris stood in place, unable to leave the company of the Alpha Consort. Rainier had been so vibrant just hours before, but now lay forever silenced.

Derek was right, Chris thought. His father’s assassination must surely bring war to the boundary gate. Chris had never taken part in a true war before, only the mock battle of tournaments, which now seemed so much play-acting. He and Rainier may have been tournament champions, but the war now begun could well see them both dead in less than a year.

He thought of the merry company below, whose placid lives must be overturned. He was grateful to have Erica’s wit and Boyd’s counsel. They would help him decide what to do. They would help oversee the soldiers, and --.

“Allison,” Chris said aloud. The boundary gate had been a loving home for a young girl, but now it was a place of war. He would have to make arrangements to care for Allison. He must send word to his sister. Briefly, he cursed himself that he had not thought quickly enough to send word back with Lord Derek. But then, the lad had just lost his father and surely had enough on his mind. At least the castle would receive word of the disaster quickly, Chris comforted himself. If Deucalion was so bold as to send his killers directly into the royal bedchamber, then Talia must be alerted immediately.

Chris’s mind swam with possibilities and questions. Rainier’s death seemed set, almost like a mummer’s stage, but he could not imagine who would benefit from the death of the Alpha Consort. Talia’s devoted husband. The highest-ranked human in Arcandrey.

Lord Derek’s father.

Chris sighed, and turned to the door. He must alert his company, bring them to readiness, and look upon how their world had changed.

***

In the years to come, Chris would remember that terrible moment standing over the Alpha Consort’s cooling body as the turning point of his adult life. Allison’s birth and Victoria’s death had each shaken his private world some years earlier, but Rainier’s death had challenged the underpinnings of the Arcandrey cosmos.

Chris was a methodical man, and a list-maker. Riding to skirmishes with Werlanden, waiting in formations, sitting vigil over a wounded soldier, there was one list he recited over and over. He and his men were plagued by events that fell from all sides, and if he was ever to take any control of his destiny, he felt he must understand them. He reviewed all the terrible occurrences that had befallen him and his country in just a few short days, and the mysteries that still lay behind them.

Boyd and Erica’s bodies had been found steaming on either side of the bridge at sunrise. They lay in pieces, the ultimate disrespect, half thrown onto the Arcandrey side and half left bleeding on Werlanden soil like so much refuse . But after so many successful forays into enemy territory, how were they caught so readily?

When Deucalion issued his proclamation of peace broken into war by spies, why did he rave so of the insult provoked by Arcandrey, knowing his own man had murdered the Alpha Consort before Boyd and Erica had ever entered?

How did Deaton’s simple ague carry away the entire royal family so quickly, just a day after Rainier’s death?

How could a werewolf sickness carry off the humans who stayed within the keep, including Master Deaton himself? After that, why did the plague spread no further?

How had the Royal Alpha power passed to Peter, allowing him to survive the deadly illness, when all knew it was meant for Lady Laura?

Did Lord Derek truly die of the plague? What had befallen him on his mad journey?

Could gentle Derek somehow be the sole instigator of all the manifold suffering?

And one question, though trivial amongst the rest, had always nagged at Christopher of Argent as the center of all:

After the supper, why seemed Lord Derek so unlike himself?


	3. Hale Derek, Give to the Poor

_Present day_

Chris and Jackson rode out on horseback, Jackson on the finest red roan mare Chris had ever seen, Chris on a fresh stallion borrowed from Peter’s stable. Chris was agog at all he had learned from Kate. Peter to marry Allison? Peter thought Allison a mage? But Allison was never a mage; her father of all people would know. Chris was frantic to find his daughter, and wished to get all the information he could from his companion.

Unfortunately, Chris first questioned the circumstances of Allison’s kidnapping. It seemed incredible to him that eight trained soldiers could be downed by a small group of ruffians, without any blood shed. But Jackson took Chris’s curiosity as an affront to his own competence. The young knight bristled with injured pride, and the more Chris asked the less he seemed willing to divulge. Chris could not press his point too far, for he depended on Jackson’s assistance to find the place where Allison might be hidden.

The last several hours had been spent mostly in silence, with only passing comments about their journey. They had followed the forest road through the Woodlands, a sun-dappled ride through a young pine forest. Now pine had given way to oak, and their gentle path to steeper slopes littered with craggy rocks. Hearing a shushing sound, Chris thought they must be approaching the River Twiene, and listened carefully. Glancing over, he realized the noise was the rustle of Jackson’s mail as he stretched. Chris couldn’t hide a smile that even the young champion’s mail and his exquisite horse’s fine saddle were colored in Alpha scarlet, as all of Peter’s prized possessions seemed to be.

Jackson caught Chris’s grin as they rode, and unbent enough to speak. “Mistress Kate placed the charm to color my livery and refreshes it once a fortnight,” he said. “King Peter deems it worthy of a spark now and then, to ensure that all know his greatest fighter.”

“It is a splendid effect,” Chris allowed, pleased for an opening, and only teasing a little. “Queen Talia would have Master Deaton do something similar in black, while I was her champion. But only for tournaments. Deaton had only two sparks to burn each day to Kate’s four, of course. Even so King Peter must value your livery, to use Kate’s magic thus.”

“King Peter must remind everyone that his eyes are red, he loves the color so,” Jackson muttered. Then he remembered himself. “But of course, even with the fight with Deucalion at a standstill,” he nodded respect to Chris, “he has these brigands to contend with, so he still must make a show of strength.”

Chris sighed. He could feel the young knight’s distrust, probably for Chris’s connection to Kate, and knew it would be difficult to get anything useful from him about Allison. HIs best bet was to play to the man’s pride, and focus on their common enemy.  “You have seen enough of these outlaws to gain their measure?” he asked.

“The Merry Wolves? Of course I have,” Jackson said haughtily. “I have faced them many times. Enough to divine the secret chambers within their withered hearts.”

“Are they so fearsome, then?” Chris asked. Allison was surely spirited enough to hold her own against any man, but it had been too many years since he could see to her training himself. He was anxious to know more of his daughter’s captors.

Jackson scoffed. “Not so fearsome, I would say. But you cannot trust them. I do not believe they do the good that they claim.”

Chris was startled by this. “The good? I thought they were outlaws?” He watched as Jackson tugged the Royal Alpha’s coin-purse from his belt, and began tossing it up in the air, as if savoring the jingle.

“The peasants who hide in the woods in fear of the king’s tax collectors,” Jackson sneered, “claim the Merry Wolves only steal from the rich and give to the poor. To give them their due, I have never heard tell that they steal from the poor. What would be the point? Also true” -- another jingling toss -- “that they have stolen much coin from wealthy travelers, and from the king himself. But _give_ their purloined riches to the _poor?"_  He rolled his eyes.

“You have not seen any testify to this?” Chris asked curiously. He had never heard of robbers with such a creed.

A snort. ‘You try running down some impolitic peasant who’s taken to the woods because the tax is due on his mud hut, and getting a sensible statement out of him. Who can believe the ravings of itinerants? Perhaps they are bribed.  Mayhap the Merry Wolves pay them off after they swear their perjury.” Another toss. Each throw sent a faint odor drifting Chris’s way, and he wondered if the knight had a dog he loved as well as he clearly loved his splendid horse.

“It does sound a difficult conundrum,” Chris said, a little amused. “Is there nothing this pack of...Merry Wolves, you say?...could do, to prove the matter either way?”

“Tis good of you to ask!” Jackson cried. His voice rose as he warmed to his subject, and tossed his bag of coins even higher. “I would allow they may do some good, if their charity ever reached the unfortunates still within the castle walls. Why, just yesterday I was having Portia reshod when I chanced to espy a poor widow woman seeking alms. I asked the farrier if he knew her tale and he told me she once had three fine sons, all lost at the border." Jackson ignored Chris’s wince. "Now she has no support, and must beg outside the keep for Peter’s occasional leavings. If they gave succor to such as her, a visible unfortunate within the castle, I might credit their claims. But of course the curs do not.”

“And did you?” Chris asked.

"Did I what?" said the knight, confused.

"Did you give alms to the widow woman?"

Jackson stared as though Chris had run mad. "No, of course not. You saw how I had to abase myself just to get this small coin from His Majesty." He punctuated this with an especially high toss in the air.

As the bag reached the highest point of its arc, a man-sized figure leapt from the top of a nearby boulder. Faster than Chris could seize his dagger, the man dove down to vault off Chris’s pommel, turning an acrobatic flip as he soared above and neatly snatched Jackson’s coin-purse in mid-flight. He landed, grinning, on the opposite side of Jackson, who panted open-mouthed like a dog.

"A poor widow who lost three sons in Peter’s war. The widow Godefroy, you mean?" The young miscreant, who looked not quite sixteen, grinned puckishly and poured the knight’s coin out into his hand. "Fear not, Jackson, you'll have a second chance to show her your charity."

"As if the Scarlet Varlet had any running through his veins,” cried a voice from far away. Chris looked up and realized that, in the confusion, they had exited the forest to overlook an especially wild stretch of the river. He craned to find the speaker. The River Twiene seemed much narrower here than Chris would have guessed. Further to the east, the land sloped steeply upwards and the river rushed downwards, white and pockmarked with ominous rocks. His greatest shock was to see a massive sacrifice oak standing on a shelf of rock right on the water’s edge, on what must be the Werlanden side. This oak was quite as large as his own near the gatehouse, though the leaves showed green in the sunlight rather than the shaded silver to which he was accustomed.  

Looking down from the top of the giant tree, Chris found the speaker: another scrawny young man leaning against the trunk, blending with the dappled light in his rough silver-gray cassock. The mage ran towards them, straight for the Twiene, and Chris cringed to see his plunge as he stepped onto air. Yet, instead of the expected splash, he disappeared where he hovered and reappeared safely on the Arcandrey bank, standing just beside Chris’s steed.

"You might be a friend we haven’t met yet,” he smirked. "But considering the company you keep, I’d rather value you for the worth of your purse."

That did not sound promising, and Chris quietly stole towards the crossbow clipped to his belt, to even the odds a bit. Too soon, however, he gasped at a prickling pain and looked down to see that a large silver oak leaf had flattened itself against the back of his hand and pinioned it firmly to his leg. Another leaf pinned his left hand despite his struggles. “Ah-ah,” the mage said. “Flutter, flutter my pretties, and show what our friend hides from sight,” he crooned. Two more oak leaves darted inside the neck of Chris’s shirt and pulled out his silver arrowhead. One cupped around it like a hand while the other sliced through the red leather thong with a wickedly sharp edge. Out of Chris’s reach in a flash, they carried their find to the waiting mage.

Curiously, he flipped the arrowhead around, first to the mirror bright and then to the molded side. “By the Green and Silver,” he chuckled. At his gesture, the two oak leaves flew off, dangling the arrowhead between them on its thong. They carried it across the rushing water high into the foliage of the giant oak. A man’s hand reached out and snatched the arrowhead. After a moment Chris saw a scowling face peeking out from within the leaves. Squinting, he could just make out a large man perched on a stout branch.

“Hale Derek!” the mage called. “You were right, ‘tis he!”

“Hale Derek,” Chris said. “Do you mean Lord Derek Hale?” He leaned forward in his saddle, trying to make out whether the man in the tree could possibly be the boy he’d once known. If Derek yet lived, did that prove him a villain? Why else would he prowl wild in the forest with this pack of young wolves?

“Lord Hale? Nay, not he,” cried the other young man...wolf. “Hale Derek, forest outlaw!”

“Hale Derek, full of grace!” the mage shouted gleefully.

“Hale Derek, lord beyond the boundaries!”

“Hale Derek, our foundering founder!” the mage smirked.

“Hale Derek,” Jackson muttered, “who hides upon the river like a coward.”

“I heard that,” the man across the river called. “Take his purse from him, Friar Stiles.”

“Isaac the gravedigger’s son’s already got it!” Jackson catcalled angrily. Then sputtered, as yet another gleaming oak leaf dove underneath his saddle and wrenched a dainty ladies’ wristlet from within the pad. As it waved in the air Chris caught a whiff of a spiced perfume. The fluttering leaf delivered the little purse to Isaac, who hefted it as though it held great weight.

“Feels like a full tourney’s winnings here. We know you always hide the best for yourself, _champion,”_ he jeered. He tossed the wristlet high into the air, caught it in his teeth in his werewolf form, and took off running, speeding away on all fours.

“Hey! Hold! You cannot take that, ‘tis my lady’s,” Jackson cried, tensing as if to pursue.

“You should know by now you’ll never best us,” the mage said, appearing on the saddle behind the scarlet knight. Chris struggled  harder against the silver leaves pinning him down, and  revised his opinion of the mage’s strength. He was unable to free himself to come to his companion’s aid; it was some consolation that Jackson looked indignant, but not particularly frightened. His previous encounters with the Merry Wolves must not have gone too badly, which raised Chris’s hopes for Allison.

Chris turned his attention to the young mage on Jackson’s saddle, and wondered that he had not heard tales of the lad’s strength even from boyhood. Few mages had the power to travel by vanishment even with their strike, but this one accomplished the feat with sparks alone. He tried to tote up how many tricks he’d seen displayed; it was always a useful advantage to have a mage’s number.

Friar Stiles hugged the knight from behind. “You want to give chase, don’t you?” he taunted. “Let’s go. I could use a ride over to the castle to start my charity in style.”

“GET OFF PORTIA, YOU CONJURIOUS BUFFOON!” Jackson bellowed.

“Tsk tsk,” the mage said. “Such a hot temper, ‘tis no wonder you reek.” He raised his arms to clap his hands upon each of the scarlet knight’s crimson cheeks, then took a noisy sniff. “Much better, wouldn’t you say?” he smirked at Chris, while the knight raged. Chris had to admit, the faint canine odor that had grown stronger since they left the castle was now gone.

“But Jackson, we must stay on our mission,” Chris argued. “Peter sent you to help retrieve my daughter, not your purse.”

Jackson rolled his eyes. _“There_ is your mission, is it not?” he asked, pointing at the man in the tree. _“You_ wish to know what has become of your daughter. He may know, but will not tell. _He_ wants to keep you on this side of the Twiene -- without coming over here himself, the great coward. You surely hope, good sir, that he will not take you prisoner for the most valuable ransom that your esteemed sister the Royal Mage would provide him, should he capture you and drag you into his lair.” Chris gaped at the knight’s betrayal. Instead, to his shock, Jackson threw him a conspiratorial wink. “The Green and Silver forbid that this craven outlaw lead you to infiltrate the sanctum of the most infuriating Merry Wolves,” the scarlet knight finished loudly.

“Green and Silver forbid,” Chris echoed faintly.

"See here, you have a bridge to reach him,” the knight concluded with a faintly surprised air. Chris looked over and found that it was true.  Somehow he had overlooked the log bridge spanning the river.  

“Now, I’ve a thieving wolf to catch, and a meddlesome mage to scrape off my back,” Jackson said, and drew his horse around, Friar Stiles still clinging behind him. “After him, Portia!”

 


	4. Hale Derek, Full of Grace

Chris surveyed the terrain before him. The river here was so wild, and the crags on both sides so dire, that the Arcandrey border had never needed the same defense here as it did west by the Boundary Gate. He rode a few yards closer to the Twiene to gauge the situation.

He was stunned to realize that the rock holding the massive sacrifice oak was not part of the Werlanden bank. Instead, it was an island in the middle of the Twiene. It appeared to be a monstrous boulder, pounded on one side by the crashing white water, and a low bar of land on the other side where the tree sheltered in the rock’s wake. The little island was much closer than he had realized, the Werlanden border farther away.

A foot below the edge of the bank, the simple log bridge spanned the distance between the Arcandrey bank and the Merry Wolves’ island. The bridge was not constructed to bear the traffic of carts, horses, or even incautious feet. It was a single length of oak heartwood, dried and hardened, lain across the span. Though Chris could see that a foundation of river rocks was bedded in each side of the earthen bank, the great log was otherwise unsecured, and it could easily roll and unseat the unwary. All crossings must be done single-file; the bridge was too precarious for any other choice. In this way, he supposed, Derek and his Merry Wolves could rebuff attackers.

As a military man, one of Chris’s great virtues was to sometimes know, in a flash, what must be done, and what cost was worth paying to achieve his end. If she lived, his daughter was ahead. There could be no turning back for him now.

He climbed down off his horse, pulled his shield and quiver of bolt-strips off the saddle and slung them across his back. He checked that Peter’s mark on his mount’s flank was as bright and alpha-red as he thought. None would disturb it on its way. Then he whispered into the creature’s ear “You’ll know your way home, I’m sure. A warm stable and soft oats await you for your fine service this day,” and slapped its haunch. He watched it trot away, back into the forest.

Chris looked across the water at the stranger on the other side. In manhood, Derek had more than fulfilled the promise of his youth, Chris saw. His shoulders had always been uncommonly broad, but now, like his father, his chest was layered with muscle to match. Chris knew Rainier had built his strength through regular practice with Talia’s knights. He wondered how the werewolf had built such bulk, since labor would not affect him the same way.

Thoughts of Derek and Rainier stirred the usual perplexed fury within Chris. He had run through the events of the fatal night innumerable times, always to the same confusion. With time and distance he could not see how Derek could be innocent of his father’s death. The facts all seemed clear. Yet even now, Chris’s heart rebelled to believe that his young admirer could have grown so twisted. The uncertainty rankled at Chris, as it always did, and he felt his face heat with anger.

If Derek was a fiend who had destroyed kingdom and family, it did not show in his face. Here, the man rose far above the promise of the pleasant lad Chris remembered. His features reminded Chris of nothing so well as the head of ancient statuary a peddler in a tent once displayed at a fair for a few coins. The white face’s cold perfection had made Chris think of his gatehouse, likely built by the same artisans, and wonder if the ancients themselves had been so far above their rough descendants. If so, Derek with his exquisite face seemed to be a throwback.

“Derek Hale,” he said softly. The word “Lord” refused to cross his teeth.

“Christopher of Argent,” the werewolf replied. “I did not hope we would ever meet again.”

“And whose fault is that?” Chris asked bitterly. “Years of killing, of war, and it all comes back to you.”

Derek slumped a little at that. “I could not ask you to think well of me.”

Chris could scarcely believe his temerity.  "Then tell me why I should! I found you with your father's throat in your own bloody hand, and still I sent my friends to die for your deceit. I was sure that the evil I suspected in you that night was not your true nature, yet now you and your outlaws have carried off my daughter. You, who wish I could think well of you, tell me how am I to do so?  Tell me, where have you been?”

“I have stayed beyond the boundaries,” Derek said vaguely.

“I have abandoned my post to save my daughter from your Merry Wolves. Is Allison beyond the boundaries, too?” Chris challenged.

Derek pursed his lips into a tight horizontal line, as if to keep the words from escaping.

“Is she here?” Chris demanded. “Is she here, ANSWER ME!”

“I cannot,” Derek forced out. “I cannot trust --”

_“You_ cannot trust? You cannot trust _me_ with the knowledge of my own daughter!” Chris bellowed.  Without a thought, he found his crossbow seated in his hand, aimed dead center at the werewolf’s heart.

“I cannot trust myself,” Derek said. “from what may be overheard. I cannot trust myself, save to defend my own. Which I must do, even from one as worthy as you.”

Leaning behind the trunk of the giant tree, Derek pulled out a stave of oak, apparently made from the full trunk of one of the saplings that grew along the river bank. The staff was just too wide for the werewolf to wrap his massive hand around, far larger than a human could manage. Without taking his eyes off Chris he hefted it and spun it in the air so fast it blurred.

Chris was so exasperated by the former lord’s use of a peasant's weapon that he shot a bolt to pin the werewolf’s middle finger to the staff. Instead Derek neatly twisted the weapon downwards and caught the green quarrel dead center. He directed a tiny smile at Chris.

Chris shrugged. “Fine, you have dexterity. What werewolf does not? Bask in your own praise.” He took a cautious step onto the bridge. Though it did not give way, it was slick with moisture from the churning spray just below. He planted his foot and moved forward.

Derek matched him, step for step, holding his staff level in front of him at its quarter and eighth, in the proper defensive position. Chris groaned his annoyance and leveled his crossbow direct between the werewolf’s eyes. He watched with satisfaction as they widened.  “What is that?" the werewolf asked, staring at the linen strip of bolts that hung down from the bow.

"Tis my own refinement to help us break Deucalion’s formations," Chris told him coolly. "It can hold more than three bolts at a time now. And I have more strips at the ready."

"Your quarrels are most colorful," Derek commented, holding his ground as Chris advanced another step.

Chris glanced down at his assortment of feathered bolts and snorted.  "Practice bolts gathered from the targets," he said. "Each man dyes his shafts a separate color, though the fletching is traditional – blue for sacrifice oak, yellow for pine and so on. They are all tipped with wolfsbane, of course. Derek, your staff cannot last long against a master bowman. The herb is sure to take you. Why not spare yourself the agony and take me to my daughter?"

"Why not turn around, Chris, and accept you cannot find that which you seek?" came the reply with a mocking bow. As Derek leaned forward, Chris saw his own silver arrowhead swing out from under the werewolf’s shirt on the red thong. The werewolf was keeping his plunder.

Three more bolts, all caught. Chris was almost halfway across the bridge, just beyond the reach of Derek’s staff. "You speak as though my daughter were a trifle beneath notice," he spat in fury. "Curse you, say her name!"

Derek only sealed his lips again and shrugged, advancing another step. Involuntarily, Chris stepped back. "Peter’s scarlet champion says you spend your days hiding on the Twiene," Chris taunted. A stratagem was forming in his mind, and he took a deliberate step backward. As he expected, Derek matched him. "Is that because you fear to face the justice of your uncle’s court?" He shot another bolt, aiming high and to the left, and observed Derek as he caught it easily.  His form was perfect and spoke of many hours’ practice with the rough weapon. Again, Chris stepped back.

Derek followed as if lost in thought. "It is not justice I fear," he said. Absently he spun his staff again. As it arced, Chris was enraged to see that the line of arrows, as straight as a mason’s level, had been captured in order so as to create a blurred rainbow that swept through the air. He shot a blue bolt at the werewolf’s unguarded belly. Again, it was nonchalantly captured in the oak, direct between the green and the purple. Thanks to Chris’s measured steps, the werewolf was now almost upon him.

“You fear to stray within the boundaries, do you?” Chris sneered. “Well, _see how you like it!”_ He reached forward between Derek’s hands and grasped the quarterstaff. By rolling himself onto his back with force, he was able to drag Derek off-balance and use his legs to boost him up and over, onto the riverbank. The werewolf’s powerful form was heavy and Chris heard the thud of Derek’s body landing on the earth. Staff and quiver rolled into the water and were swiftly carried away.

Chris turned away as quickly as he could, feeling heat from Kate’s spell clench in his chest as he did so. After a moment the pain passed and he looked back carefully to see the groaning werewolf coiled upon himself on the bank. Knowing he would not have the advantage over Derek’s strength a second time, Chris hastened along the bridge, hoping to reach the island and put enough distance between them that he might find his daughter.

Glancing back, he could see the moment when Derek recovered himself.  The werewolf took a slow, curious look all around him, flicking his left fingers against his thumb. He surveyed the entire landscape with his back to Chris before he finally turned and looked at him straight on, starting as if surprised to find him there. Chris felt like a small creature of prey as Derek’s eyes narrowed and his lips twisted into a menacing smile. “Oh, _Christopher,”_ he drawled, tauntingly. “You never could stop playing the hero. Can’t you just _fall_ like the rest of us?” With that, he leaned forward and easily lifted the massive log of sacrifice oak from its loose mooring on the Arcandrey bank.

Glancing down at the churning water Chris cried out in protest, but to no avail. He grabbed at the slick wooden surface as he slid to his waist in the water, clutching desperately at the log where it was still anchored to the island.

Derek looked stunned for a moment. Through the mist of the water Chris thought he perceived a change in the other man’s demeanor, from casual cruelty to wild concern. Without hesitation, Derek dove forward from the ravaged bank. Unlike Friar Stiles, he plunged in with a splash. Though scarcely able to see through the spray, Chris was gratified by the shocked look on the werewolf’s face when he surfaced and saw Chris clinging to the log which tilted ever farther into the center of the stream.

“Chris!” he faintly heard the cry. “Hold there, and I will reach you.” But the weight of Chris’s mail and sodden clothes were too much against the current, and he lost his grip, pulled down the Twiene and under its surface, knowing all was lost.

He pelted helplessly forward, dragged ever farther down, until a solid weight slammed into his side, and he felt himself rising up into the pure air. Sputtering and choking, he saw Derek battling the river with ferocity as they were driven forward. The torrent dashed them into more than one boulder that would surely have splintered Chris’s bones, but each time Derek managed to curve and roll to take the greatest force upon himself. Indeed, Chris realized he used each momentary pause thus accorded to scout around them, so that their path through the raging water began to take an almost orderly pattern toward the Arcandrey bank.

“There,” Derek said at one such pause, fetched up against a rock the size of a haymow. His arms were wrapped firmly around Chris’s chest, and he pointed ahead where the roots of a great tree dangled above the water. “Can you twine yourself within the strands, and drag yourself out if I steady you against the water’s battery?”

Chris studied the rescue he had not dared hope would come. “I do not think I can raise myself out bearing the weight of my mail,” he confessed. “I can secure myself, and if you climb out yourself by that route, I trust you to lift me after.” He was surprised to realize that he did.

He felt Derek shift as he shook his head, still clutching Chris in his arms. “I will not leave you behind me in so precarious a position,” he said. “If you slipped I may not reach you a second time. But the problem is easily mended.” With that, Chris yelped to feel a warm, wet hand at the back of his nape, and a sudden lightness that moved downward from his shoulders along his spine. The werewolf was rending the links of his mail with his claws. “The destruction is regrettable,” Derek said, “but I do not think I can help you escape the shirt intact and still maintain my hold.” In a moment, he had opened the back and stripped the armor off Chris from the front, all while maintaining his grip on the man’s waist. The loss of so familiar a weight, borne daily for many years, made Chris feel as though he was floating in spite of Derek anchoring him to safety.

With his free hand Derek wadded the links into a ball, and hefted it. “A soldier’s armor is precious to him. Perhaps we can save this for mending,” he said, and cast it overhand. Chris watched as nearly three stone of iron sailed through the air and landed upon the bank. Derek flung Chris’s shield as well, but Chris gave his ruined crossbow up to the current.

It was short work for Chris and Derek to suit words to deed and climb out of the churning river. Soon they both lay on the bank, a thousand yards or more below the island. Chris wondered that Derek seemed now unconcerned to land on Arcandrey soil, but the werewolf ignored his questions.  Derek’s rough green shirt clung to his skin and Chris watched silently as it seemed to inflate, aware that the werewolf’s ribs were knitting together after the Twiene’s rough handling. Chris began to suspect that Derek’s powerful frame did indeed bespeak many hours of rough toil.

He was about to comment appreciatively when Derek sat up, listening. "Shh," he warned Chris "and be ready to run on my command."

Chris tensed, a little offended, when to his shock he saw a large, scaly head emerge from the river and heave its long snaky body onto the bank. Chris thought it was a monstrous serpent until he saw the creature's two legs, and sodden wings. "A wyvern in Arcandrey," he breathed. In ten years on the Twiene he had never seen one in the flesh.

Derek rolled his eyes. "With excellent hearing," he said as the great head swiveled toward them. Derek leaped forward, claws and fangs already out, and pounced on the creature, which let out a monstrous, hissing shriek.

Stunned and weaponless, Chris cast about for a thick branch to bring to Derek’s aid. He hefted a sharp rock the size of a cobblestone and hoped it might do some good. The creature and the fully-turned werewolf lunged and fought, faster than Chris could follow. The light played on the beast’s scaled coils and over Derek’s gleaming shoulders, still wet from the river and bulging with effort. At last Derek slashed downward with one vicious blow, and the creature's head popped off and rolled with a splash into the Twiene. With a heave and a shower of ink-black blood, the body soon followed.

Chris gaped at Derek for a moment. "You look like you've had practice," he said, unable to hide the faint accusation in his voice.

Derek shrugged. "They land here sometimes, them and other forgotten creatures. Perhaps they like the tree."

“They’ve never come to the gatehouse tree,” Chris objected.

“Of course not,” Derek said. “That’s where Deucalion sends his men.” He pulled himself to his feet and began walking back along the bank. Chris followed.

“Are you saying that Deucalion sends such creatures here somehow, to invade Arcandrey?” he asked, mind racing. “I suppose his mage could manage -- but the war with Deucalion has been six years now. How many of these things have you fought?”

“Enough,” Derek said shortly, and continued on his way.

They collected Chris’s shield and ruined mail, which Derek slung over his shoulder. They walked upstream until they neared the island, where Chris wondered how they would cross. It was a pity the ancients had not constructed a bridge here as they had for the gatehouse. He supposed the water was too rough, although Deaton had once told him the stone supports of the gatehouse bridge had stood for a thousand years already.

Then he stopped short. They stood across from the island, but the detritus from the log bridge was gone. In its place, a fine sturdy bridge of white stone reached across the water.

Chris was dumbfounded. “How…” Then he caught himself. “Your mage has set a clever charm, I see.”

“He is very clever,” Derek allowed, staring at the bridge and grinning from ear to ear.

Was that why Derek had destroyed the first bridge so casually, Chris wondered? The entire afternoon had begun to take on the quality of a dream, and it was hard for Chris to believe all he had seen since the Merry Wolves first emerged from the woods. Had Derek Hale truly risked his own neck to pull Chris from a fate no man could survive?

And if he had, then why had he pushed Chris so near to his doom in the first place?

Happily, Chris thought, at least the afternoon’s exertions had helped him make progress on his goals. He was with the outlaw leader, and recalling Kate’s map he was sure the mysterious hideout must be on the island.  “Are you taking me to Allison?” he asked suddenly.

Derek looked at him, once again, with that tight, straight-lipped expression. He glanced around them as though the very forest had prying ears. “I am taking you prisoner for the most valuable ransom that your esteemed sister will provide me,” he said carefully.

At Chris’s startled laugh, realizing the werewolf had heard the scarlet champion’s muttered words, Derek quirked a tiny smile and stepped onto the bridge toward the island. “Come, let us make haste to my lair.”


	5. The Tale of Isaac, the Gravedigger's Son

_Four years earlier, two years after the death of the Alpha Consort_

Isaac Lahey, the gravedigger’s son, lay stretched out in his coffin, in darkness. It was fine work; he would carve inside the oak lid with the beaten silver-and-scale sigils that were designed to keep its occupant from wandering, later. The coffin had been hastily built for a visiting merchant-mage who had succumbed to an ill humor after swallowing a chicken bone at last night's supper. He'd be the coffin's last occupant, but as was common, Isaac was its first.

Though the coffin was well-constructed in the main, like all such carpentry it had its cracks and chinks. It was Isaac’s job to climb inside and caulk each of these with pitch, so that no grisly juices would seep out during the service and offend the olfactories of the Royal Alpha. Being shut up made the job easier in some ways, for Isaac had only to find each place where the shop's light entered the box, and paint over each narrow gleam until it vanished.

However, Isaac was always somewhat fearful of his circumstances. He was eleven now, and not so affrighted of the close quarters and encroaching darkness as he once had been. Now that he was almost a man grown, his fear was that he had no mastery over his destiny. Were danger to appear, no slim boy could possibly raise the coffin's lid from within.

Not after his father had latched the box behind him, at any rate.

Isaac’s father had always been hard, but not always so cruel. Camden once told Isaac that he had been only stern, before Isaac's mother brought her younger son into the world and exited it herself.

Isaac believed it. After all, he himself remembered a softer time. He remembered his father’s attention as he taught Isaac to carve the interior sigils on the coffin lids, wards that had long been Arcandrean tradition. Why, just two years earlier Isaac had become a journeyman on the biggest order Father had ever had.

Eleven royal caskets of mountain ash, each one carved inside with the twisting joined spirals of the Hale family. After Isaac's first try, Father had let his younger son carve the lot. He’d even ruffled his hair when Isaac finished the order so far in advance of expectations that King Peter honored Father with the post of Royal Gravedigger. In time, Isaac knew the eldest Lahey had become one of the king’s closest confidantes.

Cam once said that it was because Father knew where all the Red King's bodies were buried. "Out in the grove of sacrifice oak, you mean?" Isaac had piped. But Cam had only laughed, darkly.

Whatever pleasure Father took in his elevation was dashed the day Cam fell at the border in the Demon Alpha's war. Since then, all of Father’s worst side and none of his best remained for Isaac.

So Isaac lay in his coffin, working as silently as he could, and tried to imagine what he would do if the blacksmith’s yard caught fire, and Father’s shop was in flames. It was his preferred pastime as he worked, to plan out his means of evading disaster, telling himself stories of his bold escapes. Sometimes he liked to imagine heroic companions, but today he was on his own.

If Isaac smelled smoke and heard cries for help around the castle shops, he believed it would justify his most daring scenario, rocking back and forth until he brought the coffin crashing down off the wooden saw-horses that made its perch.

Isaac knew this was his most likely escape plan. He'd once seen Friar Harris’s service disrupted when the sows got loose and overturned the coffin. He knew the fall would break open the latch, as the sight of the mage’s blue face, pinched with displeasure even in death, would attest. But it remained only Isaac’s third-favorite plan, because the fall would be highly destructive to the coffin. Isaac had no great wish to survive one disaster only to face his father’s wrath for wrecking his merchandise.

“However,” he thought, “a truly _great_ fire might consume the evidence.” Thus satisfied, he resumed his work.

His quiet isolation was disturbed by hushed voices in conversation, entering the shop. Father’s voice came clearer as he neared Isaac’s coffin. Had he come to let him out early? Isaac scrubbed his brush more quickly so as not to be found a laggard. Then he recognized the voice of the Red King, and his hand stilled in terror. Despite their accord, it was unheard of for King Peter to enter Father’s shop during daylight hours.

For a moment Isaac feared he might be discovered by the Royal Alpha’s keen senses. Though he did not understand the reason, Isaac knew Father did not want other men to know of the way he ensured his son stayed at his duties, and surely not the king. Then he sighed in relief at the acrid stench of pitch surrounding him. _“King Peter does not know, and Father has forgotten I’m here,”_ the lad thought, and held his breath.

"I want you to ready three coffins," the king said. "Two of mountain ash and the third of sacrifice oak." Isaac wondered how the Red King had found two enemy wolves and a mage to bury, when all were now so rare in Arcandrey. Perhaps spies from Werlanden?  "I shall capture these outlaws within the week and I want all prepared for me when I do. They have beggared and bothered the collectors of my rightful taxes for the last time. Carve your sigils well; I will not have their spirits roaming.”

“Yes your Majesty,” Father said obsequiously. “I shall make haste to fulfill your commission.”

Isaac shuddered as he understood the king’s intent. The only such outlaws he'd heard of were the Merry Wolves, who seemed to take nothing for themselves and had become heroes among the tradesmen in the castle yard. Now the Royal Alpha planned to kill them? It seemed a great pity. Isaac had never seen the Merry Wolves in action himself, but the tales of their courage and wit had caught his fancy.

From shop to shop, the commoners whispered that two of the Merry Wolves were servants who’d somehow survived the fire and plague that scoured the keep two years ago. Isaac had glimpsed Friar Stiles and his friend Scott McCall as they went about their duties in the castle. They were a few years older than Isaac, whose father had kept him apart from others’ company. Isaac did not know Scott well enough to judge whether he might have grown to become the True Archer, rumored to be the best bowman in Arcandrey. It was easier to believe that young Stiles, who had loved to play pranks as Master Deaton’s apprentice, now plied his magic in the woods as a true Friar of the craft.

Less was known of the scowling giant with shoulders as broad as a cart axle, who led the Merry Wolves in their exploits on the outskirts of Arcandrey. Unlike the others, he had never been seen by those who bore their tales to the castle. The few tales of his extraordinary feats deep in the forest were legendary, though some claimed fearfully that the largest Merry Wolf bore the blue eyes of a murderer.

“Use the finest sacrifice oak, the mage is powerful and the wood must hold fast,” King Peter ordered. “That coffin and one warded for an archer need only fit a normal man, but the third should be half again as broad, to contain a rough-hewn giant. Oh, and Lahey,” the king's voice dropped and Isaac strained to hear, “carve the inside of that casket all over with joined spirals, then disguise the carving.”

“My lord!” Lahey gasped. Isaac could hardly contain his own shock, and wondered that the Royal Alpha did not hear his racing heart. Joined spirals were reserved for Arcandrean royalty. Isaac thought to the eleven ash caskets of all sizes, built to contain the entire Hale family. One of them must have stood empty. His head swam as he considered the possibilities. If outlaw and royal were one and the same, Isaac knew which Hale it was.

"Have your quick-fingered son do the work," the king said, and Isaac cringed at his father's sudden hiss of remembrance. "I will not have that one roaming."

“You must have the order so soon, my lord?” Father asked. “Are you so near to finding them?”

“They will come to me, my good fellow,” Peter chortled. “If they want to steal from the rich, I’ve riches to lure them all. My squire and my champion will see to it. With your help I'll set a tasty trap in the Woodlands for them. They’ll rue the day they ever plagued my roads.” The king’s voice began to fade as the pair left the shop, and Isaac breathed a sigh of relief. He worried for the health of the Merry Wolves, though. Peter’s reign had been difficult for all after years of peace under his sister, and Isaac dreaded that one of the few bright spots might be snuffed out.

Then Isaac perked up. The Royal Alpha thought he would find his prey in the Woodlands? They might waylay the occasional traveler there, but none of their great adventures ever took place in that open, tame part of the forest. Judging from the tale of the True Archer feeding the needy family over the winter with strings of bream and perch, and the bawdy song about Friar Stiles evading the eager laundress, and the whispers that the scowling giant had taken down a rampaging griffin single-handed, Isaac had a shrewd suspicion that the Merry Wolves' hideout must be further out. Somewhere out where the water ran wild. Perhaps tonight, after Father had gone to bed, he could sneak out and warn them. He imagined his daring escape from the Great Hall, how he would creep silently through the darkness, and --.

Isaac cringed as his coffin was suddenly flooded with light, his father looming over him.

“So,” his father growled, “the mouse hides away and listens like a sneak, eh?” Father struck him on the back with the rod that never stood far from his hand. “What did you hear, boy? Tell me, WHAT DID YOU HEAR?”

“Nothing, nothing!” Isaac cried. “The sealing is nearly done, and it stopped up the noise.”

Father scowled in disbelief. “To lie to me on this is to betray your king, boy.”

_"He’s no king of mine,"_ Isaac thought bitterly. _"He doesn’t treat those in his care well enough to deserve the name."_ Then he realized how close his thoughts drew him to a much greater, more agonizing repudiation, and clamped his jaw. This only angered Father further, and he raised his stick and rained down blows upon his son. Scrambling to cover his head and neck, Isaac knew from harsh experience that only the sides of the box saved him from deep bruises and even broken bones. It sometimes took days before the king’s mage had a leftover spark to mend them.

“His Majesty has great plans for all of us,” Lahey huffed. “Great plans. We cannot risk your loose lips telling tales around the evening meal.” Isaac protested as his father lowered the lid upon him again. “We’ll need the casket in the morning,” the man said as the light shuttered away. “If you dare befoul it before then, I’ll throw the corpse in atop you and be well rid of you both.” And Isaac heard the rasp of the coffin latch sliding into place.

Isaac Lahey, the gravedigger’s son, washed his sleeves with tears for a few desolate minutes. He was locked up all night, and at his father’s words he knew he would be unable to hold his water until morning. Father might well kill him for that alone, and the Merry Wolves were to be put down as well. Isaac felt a terrible, searing loss.

He heard the bell toll, summoning everyone in to supper. Father would likely be near the head of the table. The rest of the castle society was well used to Isaac missing meals, he knew, and would be unlikely even to comment. He was on his own in the lonely shop yard until morning. Everyone was in the keep now, with nothing to draw them outside except for the gravest of disasters, nothing short of thunderstorm or fire or invasion by bandits. He'd welcome an invasion if it was led by the Merry Wolves' broad-shouldered giant. He remembered what the king had said. Could that truly be Derek Hale? If so, his hero certainly hadn't waited around to be killed. He had found a way out, with his Merry friends, and the three of them had become a pack together.

Isaac knew he had to make his own way out.  He tried to settle himself. What would he do if he had to escape…

Escape. Fire, and escape.

Minutes later, Isaac stood up from the shattered remains of the merchant’s coffin, which lay around him on the stone floor like a broken eggshell. Father would be furious in the morning, but he would not tarry to see. Isaac snatched up Father’s stick and wadded his work rag around one end, sticking it to the wood with all his remaining pitch. After a quick stop at the smithy’s furnace to light this long-burning torch, Isaac Lahey, man on his own, ran out towards the river and into the night.


	6. The Tale of How Blue and Yellow Made a Green Wolf

Isaac hastened a long way down the dark path, pausing at times to ease his bruises. He had swiftly moved through the fields that surrounded the castle, then entered the edge of the pine forest while the last of the sunlight still filtered through the trees.  He had only been so far twice before, always with his father to retrieve a load of rare wood, and that was with a horse and cart. Isaac felt profoundly alone. While the elder Lahey was not a congenial companion, to his son he projected such an aura of force that Isaac could not imagine any strength to overcome it. Isaac himself longed for such power, but could not think how he might gain it.  

For company he could only chant a verse of the prayer Cam had taught him, remembered from their mother:

 _Hail to thee, o Green and Silver_  
_Ease thy traveler's way_  
_Stoutest oak and strike of lightning_  
_Bear me aloft, I pray_

Isaac had repeated his mother’s prayers many times before, but this time his faith seemed rewarded. He had not hoped to reach the wildest run of the Twiene before daybreak, and yet he heard its roar just after the long summer daylight had vanished into night.  He wondered how he would know his way. The easy path, he knew, was to the west and towards the Woodlands.  The path was tree-lined and gentle there, he knew, shifting from solid oak to soft pine, with the rare lonesome stand of mountain ash far off the trail.

"But it wouldn't be right if it were easy," he scolded himself. "True heroes like the Merry Wolves would embrace a challenge."

Thus emboldened he turned to the eastern path, where forbidding rock formations began and the walk would be harder going. The jagged boulders put him in mind of an enormous beast that had collapsed and died with its mouth open.

 _A fitting home for bandits who affright the Royal Alpha,_ he thought, and began to walk, taking care to stay well away from the unguarded edge of the river, switching his torch from hand to hand.

He continued wandering through the forest until it seemed more rock than trees, and he heard a great crash of water ahead. Taking his bearings, he looked up, and wondered for a moment that a ribbon of the sky seemed to have gone full black. He realized by the sharp line dividing stars from absence that he was looking up from the base of a great stone bridge which led to an even greater craggy boulder in the water, at least eight horses high. He could just make out a tremendous crash of whitewater thundering down onto the rock as if from the heavens.

He put his hand on the stone arch, expecting to feel smooth craftsmanship, but instead felt the rough divots of a natural formation. It was such a wonder that he couldn’t understand why he had never heard of it.

“Truly are the Green and Silver the mightiest builders,” he murmured. Crossing the bridge would not be easy. It was only just wide enough to hold him, and it arced high into the air, so much so that even with his torch he could not see exactly where it came down on the island in the water. This bridge curved much higher than Isaac privately felt it ought to; he would have to crawl more than walk to reach the central peak, and of course there was no railing. Yet there could be no question that he was on the path he needed, and that the only way to continue his course was to cross. Isaac steadied his torch, and began.

He was able to take the first few steps up before he skidded halfway back. It seemed the better part of valor to scale the bridge as he might climb a slanted rooftop. He got on hands and knees, trousers immediately soaked through by the wet rock, and carefully shifted his torch to his left hand so the flame hung over the river’s edge, to avoid the spray of the churning water. He edged up, with one hand clutching the torch, and the other gripping the rough side of the bridge.

Catastrophe struck just as he approached the bridge’s peak. Isaac’s hand slipped, and he almost cried to see his torch plunge forward down the far side of the bridge. To his horror, he realized with the dying glow that the bridge did not lead to dry rock after all, but to the exact spot where the water pounded the giant boulder the hardest. The burning pitch glowed just a moment beneath the surface before all went dark, and Isaac was fully blind.

Isaac sought frantically for an escape plan. The safest would be to turn back. He thought that he could slide down just far enough to reach the safety of the riverbank, and retrace his steps. _Might as well retrace them all the way home,_ he thought bitterly.

But no, he thought, and clung harder to the stone sides. There was nothing left for him at home. Even if he dared hope that his father might not kill him, there was always the Royal Alpha. The Red King was exceedingly cunning. He would certainly suspect why the much-tormented gravedigger’s son chose this night above so many others to run away and slink back again. Isaac had no doubt that one of the convenient accidents that had befallen so many around King Peter’s court would happen to him in short order.

And if he turned back, the Merry Wolves would die.

At that thought, he gripped the stone edges harder still, and hissed as he felt a gash open in the palm of his right hand. He jerked his hand back and planted it flat on the rough surface to steady himself, feeling his blood mingle with the cold, wet rock. He needed a plan.

“To escape you,” he told his stone tormentor, “I will abide here ‘til morning light, when I can better make my way toward my goal.” He took a deep breath. “The Green and Silver watch over me and guide me to them I seek,” he murmured, and wrapped his left hand tightly around the edge of the stone arch.

Then he shouted with fright as his fingers clenched upon air, he plunged forward, and he felt himself tumbling down the far side of the bridge into the thundering Twiene below. He squeezed his eyes shut in terror, knowing the force of the river would snap his neck before he had time to drown.

Instead, he gasped in shock as he felt himself suddenly warm and dry, landing gently on something soft and earthy. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.

Isaac lay on his back on a thick bed of moss. He was in a massive cavern, as high as the boulder but much better lit. It was as large as the keep, with a rustic fire pit and delicious cooking smells. Torches ringed the space and provided light, though the cave was not even as smoky as the Great Hall at first light. The Twiene still roared behind him as if the water hit an invisible shield that covered the cave's opening, but he no longer felt its spray. Around the edges he could see indentations almost like doorways, and he idly wondered if the middle one led to a pantry, like home.

More pressing were the three young men racing up to stand before him, all open-mouthed in shock. Well...one young man, and two youths only a year or two older than himself.

“How did you --“ the one in the gray cassock said. Isaac looked at him more closely.

“Friar Stiles!” he cried. “It _is_ you!”

“But no one can pass through the water but us,” the other young man said, perplexed.

Isaac wanted to get a grasp on the situation, so he stood up.

“I think the Green and Silver led me here,” he said, wincing a bit at the pull of his bruises. “It is an honor to meet the True Archer.”

Then his gaze fell on the third man standing behind them, the surly giant. Though he had only glimpsed the man across the Great Hall years before, Isaac knew him at once and dropped into a deep bow, wincing at the pain from his back. “Hail, Derek,” he said to his rightful lord.

His rightful lord came up to stand before him. “Nay, not I,” he said quietly, and urged Isaac up with a gentle hand. He kept his hold on Isaac’s shoulder after he was standing and wondrously, the pains of the day seemed to flow away at his touch. “But who are you?”

Friar Stiles snickered. “Hail, Derek,” he mocked. “It has a fine ring to it. Hale Derek, slay the dragon. Hale Derek, bow to no man. Hale Derek, seize the thr--.”

“Enough, Stiles,” Derek said sharply. “We must learn more of our guest.”

The True Archer came over at Derek’s nod, and took Isaac’s hand. “Call me Scott,” he said warmly. “You’re Lahey’s boy, aren’t you? The gravedigger’s apprentice?”

“His son,” Isaac said flatly, and explained about his father, and his flight, and the injury on the bridge. As he spoke he realized that the wound no longer pained him, and saw with a shock that the two werewolves were pulling his hurt into themselves.

Shaken by the honor, which he knew he did not deserve, Isaac pulled away. “Nay, ‘tis my own burden, we need not share it,” he said.

Derek said firmly, “It would not be fitting. Scott and I can take turns until you are better.”

“Ugh, _werewolves,”_ Friar Stiles said. “Never any good at problem-solving.”

“Hey,” the True Archer -- _Scott_ said. “I was just as human as you, before.”

“More, no doubt,” Derek said, rolling his eyes. “Tis well known mages have rarefied tastes.”

“I’ll rarefy you,” Friar Stiles said, and flicked something shiny at Isaac’s face. He tried to duck but it followed him down. He had just enough time to recognize a silver oak leaf before it smacked him on the forehead. It felt like his whole body seized up for a moment, but then he felt a wonderful relief, all his hurts forgotten.

“There you are,” Stiles gloated to his comrades, “so easily done, I don’t understand why you two even bother.” He paled, suddenly, and sank to his knees. Scott rushed to catch him. Derek, with a glance to make sure Isaac was alright, hurried after.

“How many?” Lord Derek asked his mage.

“Eleven splits now, since yesterday,” Stiles said, and Scott clucked in disbelief.

“No wonder you slept through your morning meal,” he chided. “We thought you were dead.”

“Don't follow Deaton’s path too far, Stiles,” Derek cautioned, “else you'll follow him to the grave.”

Isaac wondered what they were talking about. He’d think it was sparks, but that made no sense. Eleven! No mage could hold even half so many without burning up. Besides, no spark could be split; every child knew they were the fundamental building block, perhaps the atomy of life itself.

Friar Stiles seemed to have recovered himself, and stood. “Enough of this,” he said. “Our guest missed his dinner, and as Scott reminds me, I missed my breakfast.” He headed toward the cave opening in the middle, which Isaac was pleased to see was indeed a pantry. On a rough stone shelf, woven baskets contained acorns and grains, while well-filled sacks smelled as though they held root vegetables directly on the cool stone floor.

Seated at a rough but comfortable stone table, over a pleasant repast of salmon and burdock root, Isaac explained his mission to the Merry Wolves, repeating the Red King’s order for coffins, and his flight into the dark. Deliberately, he withheld the details of the Royal Alpha’s plan to ensnare his nephew’s pack.

“Peter wants to kill us,” Scott said wonderingly. “We’ve done no real harm. I thought he might leave us alone.”

“Peter wants to kill us,” Stiles said ecstatically. “I told you this was the way to draw him out from his lair, didn’t I?””

“Peter wants to kill us,” Derek said, without surprise. He turned to Isaac. “Did he give any hint as to where? Or how?”

Isaac opened his mouth, scarcely able to believe his own daring. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “if you make me a Merry Wolf.”

Derek was already shaking his head. “You may stay, but only as a human. I am sorry to bring you disappointment, but we do not have that power. Scott is an innocent beta, while I,” Derek flashed his blue eyes, and Isaac gasped. “I am a murderer. You know the lore. Blue eyes may be masked with ordinary red, but are too corrupt to ascend to the Royal Alpha power. It’s why the Green and Silver chose Peter for their elevation,” he said bitterly.

Isaac’s fleeting hopes to escape into power of his own were crushed.

Friar Stiles leaned over and tapped Isaac’s knee for solace. “There may be a way,” he said thoughtfully, pinning Derek with his gaze. “My mother taught me a rhyme I have often remembered. ‘Mix yellow and blue with faith, to make a green wolf’” he quoted. “‘Green wolf’ must surely mean ‘new wolf’. If yellow and blue -- Scott and our Hale Derek -- each give Isaac the bite, I believe he may turn into a wolf so fine as if a red-eyed alpha bit him. Finer,” he added, “since the only alpha we know is your uncle, and he’s too stingy to bite anyone.”

Derek looked suspiciously at his mage. “What are you up to, Stiles,” he said.

“Nothing! Nothing! Just granting this poor lad’s dearest wish, and conducting a little test in the bargain,” Stiles cozened. He looked agog at the opportunity, Isaac thought. Could he really want a third werewolf so badly?

Derek objected. “We will injure the lad for nothing,” he said.

“Then I’ll spend another spark to mend him,” Stiles told him. “You don’t mind a little pain if it gets you what you want, right, Isaac?” Isaac nodded vigorously.

“The bite could kill you,” Derek said heavily. “Is that what you --”

“Ah ah ah,” Stiles argued pertly. “An _Alpha_ bite could kill him. I’ve never heard of a beta bite poisoning someone, have you? The worst that will happen is that Isaac will be twice bitten, a little shy. Anyway, he _won’t_ be poisoned. It’s meant to be. How else could he have found us?”

Scott turned to Isaac. “Most people can’t even see the bridge,” he whispered. “Even Stiles and I couldn’t see it, until Derek discovered the way.”

“See! See!” Stiles cried. “He was guided here, destined to be one of us. You revere the destiny planned by the Green and Silver more strongly than any of us, Derek, how can you deny them?

“Please,” Isaac begged, “Please, if there’s any hope, I’ll try anything. I’ll be your most devoted servant, my lord.”

Derek blanched. “I beg you, do not call me that,” he said. Then his shoulders sagged. “I suppose we must all learn a lesson taught by foolishness,” he grumbled, and reached out to take Isaac’s arm, shifting as he did so. Isaac gasped as the ferocious fangs bit down. He thought Derek strove to be gentle, but the beard on his turned face rubbed against the delicate skin to conjure a great spark like dry wool, radiating from the bite all through Isaac’s body.

Derek drew away. “You too, Scott. Hurry,” Stiles ordered. Scott bent forward and placed his own bite centered over Derek’s. It was less gentle, as Scott had more trouble gauging the force needed to break the skin. Strangely, though the second bite looked more vicious, Isaac felt no spark. His attention was fully fixed upon the small pain that lingered from Derek Hale’s bite.

They all watched in silence, until an air of disappointment suffused them. Isaac searched himself for a change, but felt nothing more. He glumly stared at the wound, a narrow oval of Derek’s toothprints surrounded by the wider red circle of Scott’s. Then suddenly, he gasped in exultation as the mark from Derek’s bite healed over and vanished from his skin. Several heartbeats later, Scott’s bite did as well.

Stiles took Isaac’s arm and examined it like a holy relic. “I knew you could do it,” he breathed. “I always believed that you could, but to see it firsthand --” He raised shining eyes to Derek, who did not meet his gaze. After a long moment, with Derek gazing resolutely into the fire, Stiles looked to Scott as well. “We did it,” he said.

“We made a miracle,” Scott said, pleased.

Stiles' face twisted as if to a jest only he understood, but then he laughed and hugged his friend. “Yes, you did. You BOTH did.”

Derek turned to Isaac. “Now that you are a Merry Wolf,” he said, and Isaac glowed, “what is the king’s plan?”

“Oh,” Isaac said. “He is sending a cartload of tempting treasure to the Woodlands, hoping to draw you out. Now that you know, you can avoid that place, and --”

Stiles clapped an arm around his shoulders. “Little brother,” he said sardonically, “what makes you think we want to _avoid_ his trap?”


	7. Hale Derek, Be of Sound Mind

_Present day, Derek ushers Chris into his lair after their battle on the bridge_

Derek seemed oddly satisfied at the sight of the ancient bridge leading to his island, considering how many times he must have seen it before. To Chris, the old structure seemed somehow more fitting than if it echoed the modern style of Arcandrey castle, since he had spent years with a similar construction at the gatehouse. The bridge was wide and nearly flat, with a well-hewn guardrail for safety. Lost in a strange world, Chris took comfort in the unexpected familiarity.

The security ended once Chris strode across it and landed in a well-appointed but narrow cave, and his wonder at the unreality grew. The river roared as it fell above their heads in a massive cataract which stopped short before a drop of water could spill on the rock floor. The great lens of water pounded as it fell as if onto a plate of solid air. Sunlight streamed through the water and into the cave, illuminating it far better than any torches.

Curious, Chris reached out to touch the wall of water. His fingers passed through the lens without disturbing it, and he could feel the mighty forces tethered there as the wetness doused his fingers. When he pulled them back, however, they were entirely dry. The magic required to leash such force was almost unimaginable. Chris shook off a feeling of unease. He hoped to retrieve Allison without further difficulty, but if his daughter were held captive by those who could reshape nature to their will, he was not sure how he might free her. He wished he could trust Derek’s benevolence more fully, but the werewolf’s mercurial temperament seemed to run hot and cold without warning.

“Are your pack the only ones who can enter?” he asked Derek, who was examining the long wall of the right side of the cave with a crestfallen air. "Is this your lair?”

It clearly was, and Chris could not fathom what Derek found so troubling about a wall. He tried again. "Now that we are here, I ask you again, where is my daughter?" But Derek only hunched his shoulders and shrugged.

Chris's fingers twitched towards the pouch hiding Kate’s burgundy stone. He edged closer to the fire pit so he could throw it in. If there was ever a man who needed the truth unveiled, it was Derek Hale.

His hand was stayed by the noisy entrance of Isaac and Friar Stiles.  Though he missed their entrance through the water's perpetual curtain, he turned to find them picking themselves up off the moss bed and glancing between Derek and the wall. Isaac’s gaze fell upon Chris and he graced him with an open smile.

"Is that your bridge out there?" he asked. "It's lovely! Derek's the only one who ever gets handrails, and his are always wobbly.” Chris was confused by the young man’s words, unable to make out the jest.

“And why has our new friend come to us?” Friar Stiles asked. “For caring and sharing the family secrets?”

“He is our prisoner to ransom back to his sister,” Derek said, “nothing more.”

Chris rounded on Derek in utter betrayal.

“What manner of man -- wolf -- are you?” he demanded. “You try to kill me, then take pains to save me. You are an exile who protects his country from all manner of beasts. You are royal, yet you huddle in a cave like an animal. You keep me docile believing I’ll see my daughter, and now you say I’m your prisoner? Is there no end to your contradictions? Are you _mad,_ man?”

“Yes,” Derek said simply. “I believe so. That is the problem.”

***

Seeing that Derek would say no more, the younger Merry Wolves flung themselves underfoot, declaring that supper must be served directly. They stored their food in a rough pile kept cool under a damp blanket of moss. The pack apparently survived off of preserved game poached from the king’s lands and an assortment of wild greens, mushrooms and berries. Though rough, it reminded Chris of the traveling festivals the gatehouse company made of walking the border, when they supplemented their packed stores with special license to hunt and forage through the surrounding forest.

From time to time as he passed by, Isaac would capture Chris’s attention, jerk his head at the long rock wall that had so disturbed Derek, and wink, even clapping Chris on the shoulder in a reassuring manner. From this Chris surmised that whatever malady plagued Derek Hale, it must be catching.

Chris cursed himself that he had not thrown Kate’s wine-dark enchantment in the fire when he had the chance. Still, he admitted that he had held back because of his own reluctance, even before the Merry Wolves had joined them. He knew there must be more to Derek's story and if the man would talk, Chris would listen. But his desperation was growing.

Stiles directed him over to a large flat rock the size of a carriage wheel where he bade Chris to sit on a waiting log. The Friar set each place with a broad trencher of a curious tan. Chris poked at his cautiously.

“You mustn’t think we neglect the niceties, out here in our exile,” Friar Stiles tutted. “We’d hardly eat straight off so fine a table like barbarians.”

“Why do they look like this?” Chris asked.

Stiles shrugged. “Acorn flour. We do our best to pick out the worms, of course.”

“Of course,” Chris grumbled, aware he was being goaded. “You can’t just set one of your silver helpers to sort them out beforehand?”

Isaac joined them with a rough wooden bowl filled with stew which he ladled onto each trencher. “That’s exactly what he does,” he exclaimed, pleased. “You should see them all going at it.”

“All?” Chris asked. “Just how many sparks have you to burn, Friar Stiles?”

Stiles smirked. “How many fish swim under one boat? How many stars soar over your head? How many leaves do you crunch underfoot in the forest?”

“That depends,” Chris said, playing dim. “Are we talking about a pine forest, or ash, or --”

“Oak,” Isaac said, rolling his eyes. “We are _always_ talking about oak.”

“It’s not just for werewolves anymore,” Stiles said.

Derek came and took the last seat, just where the king would sit in the Great Hall, Chris thought irreverently. Chris had lost his knife to the Twiene, so like the others, he sopped up his portion with pieces of his bitter yet tender trencher.

After a few minutes, Chris could stand it no longer. “When you say you are _mad,”_ he prompted.

Derek put his bite down and looked across at him, although Isaac and Stiles kept eating with feigned unconcern. “How well did you know my mother?” he asked.

Chris gave the unexpected question some thought. “I was her champion for three years, so I was often in her company as you know.”

“And how do you remember her manner?”

Chris shrugged, wondering if there was some hidden barb in the question. “She was gracious to all. I frequently saw her capture even the most wary with her charms, and at times was ensnared myself. She kept Deucalion in check as your uncle has not. She loved her children and their father and her people.” He smiled at a memory. “At tourneys she was always in exceptional high spirits; she seemed to shine most brightly at the games.”

“High spirited,” Derek said somberly. “That is how I remember her as well. She would have such vigor during the games that she hardly slept for the whole three days.”

“I did not know that,” Chris acknowledged. “I do remember Rainier taking more of her duties upon himself as the games wore on.”

Derek nodded. “He was her protector -- as much as the Royal Alpha might need protecting. Deaton was a crucial shield as well. Mother was a great ruler, but they weighed the anchors that steadied the throne.”

“So you think Talia’s high spirits were madness?” Chris shook his head. “I have much experience with the condition, believe me, and that does not sound like any I have yet encountered.”

Derek looked frustrated by Chris’s demurral, and plowed onward. “For all the soaring spirits the public sometimes saw, there were also times when she was brought so low she could not be persuaded to leave her bed. At its worst, this, too, lasted days. Only Deaton could bring her out of such a spell, or forestall her falling into one. At her ascension to the throne he dedicated a spark exclusively to this purpose. They were partners on this since before I was born -- even before she met my father.”

Chris took a bite of his cooling stew as he considered. “You’re saying Deaton used his magic on your mother, to bind her wounded spirit? ‘Tis impossible.”

“How would you know?” Stiles challenged. “Master Deaton was the cleverest, most powerful mage in the land.”

"Deaton had one strike, two sparks, all of exceptional size," Chris said. "I have seen his matrix-shade that shows his power, it hangs in the Great Hall. And I have certainly seen him perform three feats in one day. There was nothing left to dedicate. "

"Perhaps you do not know all about sparks and strikes and mages," Stiles said smugly.  "Does Mistress Kate tell you all of her secrets?"

“If a mage's power could ease a troubled soul, my wife would have found a way!” Chris exploded. “Victoria had no high spirits to compare with Talia’s, but I am no stranger to the darker emotions you describe. No soldier ever fought more bravely than my love, yet in the end she was overcome by the ill humors that tormented her. Perhaps I failed as her second where your father did not,” he told Derek. “But mark me, she strove mightily to use the gifts of the Green and Silver to overcome their curse, yet in the end she fell by her own hand.”

The rest of the table now stared at Chris with a united interest. Isaac sat brightly at attention. Stiles looked fascinated, as though a meadowlark had meowed to greet the morning.

Derek, however...Derek looked as though Chris had opened a hidden door to reveal a different world.

“You saw it as an enemy that she fought to conquer,” Derek murmured. Chris could not read all of the emotions playing across the man’s face. Fascination, he thought, and hope and a kind of awe?

“Yes, of course,” Chris answered. “What else would it be?”

Isaac cleared his throat. “Some might say corruption,” he said, glancing significantly at Derek. “An evil contamination, owning and ruining them whom it touched. But evil is different, is it not? If you’ve met true evil, you’ll know that.” The young man patted Chris’s arm, looking wise beyond his years.

“True,” Chris agreed. “For I have also known madness that claws like a demon cat, forever ready to pounce and seduce its owner to embrace the darkness. I have known madness that burns cold, that schemes and steals and even kills to feed its wants. Victoria was not like that. But my father was, and grew worse with age, however successful his labors to hide it at court. There was no reasoning with his baser nature, nor did I ever see a balm of any kind.”

Derek wilted. “Yes,” he said. “That is how it is. Truly, there is no hope."

Both of the Merry Wolves reacted. “Derek, no!” Isaac exclaimed. He turned beseeching eyes to Chris. “Tell him he’s wrong. Tell him he’s not like that. He won’t listen to us because he thinks we’re too soft with him.”

Stiles spoke over him, even louder. “Derek, I’ve told you, no madness recognizes the lines of politics. Your attacks are always within the boundaries and never once out here. How do you explain that?” He looked at Chris. “You tell him. Tell him what a cloggins he’s being.”

“I cannot,” Chris said, and the younger men looked outraged. He held up a forestalling hand. “I cannot, only because I do not know the full story. But I think I know part of it.” He looked at Derek. “This very day, on the bridge, it was as if one man pushed me to my doom and a different man fished me out. Years ago I marked upon the same sort of shift, from one youth to another, the night your father died.”

“The night he was murdered, you mean,” Derek said hollowly.

“Yes. As you say. The night he was murdered, I suspected your hands as the cause, and yet I could not believe it of the gentle spirit I had observed for years. Indeed, I have carried it with me as one of the great mysteries of that night.”

Isaac nodded approvingly. “You’ve seen how it is, then.”

But Derek was already shaking his head. “You are too generous with me,” he said. “I dare not stray long across the river, I cannot aid my people as I should, because I cannot predict when such spasms will come upon me. I can never trust myself to pass the forest's boundaries, nor truly even outside the walls of this cave."

"Derek, we have talked about this," Stiles said impatiently. "Just because I cannot find any sign of enchantment upon you is no proof against it. What you've suffered could come from possession, and not your will at all."

Chris looked at Derek's stubborn, set face. He pondered what it would take for the gentle, affectionate lad he remembered to slaughter his entire family, and agreed that possession seemed more than likely. "Why don’t you believe it, Lord Derek?" he asked softly.

"Because when the evil desire is upon me, I crave nothing else," Derek said. "It does not feel as though some malign creature had invaded my mind and seized control. It is not an outsider that I can fight. Instead it is as if my very soul has inverted itself, howling for the darkest acts that I have ever contemplated. I know that all that I love shall be taken away, and instead of feeling fear I hunger for it.”

"The first time it happened was a few weeks after we left the castle," Friar Stiles said quietly. "We had talked of going back to the keep now that things had settled, and began to make our return. Derek seemed different as we passed through the forest. He tried to kill Scott, our other friend."

"Thank the Green and Silver Stiles still had his strike that day," Derek murmured, shamefaced.

Stiles looked abashed. “We didn’t know Derek very well, then, and I still blamed him for the deaths at the castle. In a fury, I flung my strike straight at him. It bowled him over and shoved him all the way back across the Twiene until he hit the great oak which stands outside. My strike lost its power, and Derek fell in the water.” He was pensive. “You could have drowned because of me.”

“At least we learned,” Derek said. “We learned the madness cannot cross the Twiene, and cannot reignite once it burns out. Whenever I have been struck once by the evil moods and recovered, I have learned that I may travel safely into Arcandrey for a time. Still, I have always been safe if I reached the water’s edge. Until today.”

Derek stared down at his trencher. "Even standing upon the riverbank, I suddenly despised you, Chris, as though my resentment and envy towards you had grown over a lifetime. I thirsted to clear you from my path. Then, once I took up the bridge and you were drowning, my mind cleared in an instant. 'Tis purest fortune that you were not the latest victim of my insanity, dashed against the rocks." He gazed at his hands. "I do not...I do not understand how I became so corrupt as to see you this way, when I have always believed you to be the greatest of heroes."

Chris took this in, stunned, while Isaac took his friend's hand. "But Derek, don't you see? It makes no more sense that you would burn to kill your family than to destroy your hero. Can't you admit that this must be a problem outside you?"

At that Derek jerked away and stood back from the table. "It does not matter," he said heavily. "Whether the evil is in me, or whether it merely finds a home within me, I still cannot control it. I still am a danger to you all, to the unfortunates living in the woods and those in the castle. It is better that I stay away, with you as my agents, and accept the protection and the dictates of the Green and Silver.” He glanced at the long wall.

Friar Stiles looked exasperated. “If the Green and Silver are worth your worship, they would not demand such a compromise,” he said. “You know how the kingdom suffers under Peter. You know who has been lost. How can you be worse than the Red King? Really, when you tote up the body count he’s well ahead of you by now.”

“They call him Red for the blood on his hands, but in truth Peter was always too cunning to sully himself,” Derek spat. “As Royal Alpha, his dead fall by his command, never by his hand. I’ve no love for my uncle, but at least he has never personally engineered a bloodbath.” In fury Derek held his hands out, terrible claws extended, and his eyes flashed blue. “That happy fate falls to me. Better I rot in this providential tomb, than wreak more harm on my people than Peter ever dreamed of.” At this he turned and practically ran for the wall of water, snatching up a staff from a pile by the entrance.

“He forgot,” Isaac said softly, resting a gentle hand on the Friar’s silver cassock. “Stiles, you know he wasn’t thinking.”

“That my father is dead, and Peter likely to blame?” Friar Stiles snarled. He flung himself away from the table, gazing in fury at the roiling cataract where Derek had disappeared. “Convenient that he forgets the worst of Peter’s crimes so he can martyr himself to his own bad opinion. You know he will never take action, Isaac. He says he cannot overcome the compulsion, but when does he even try?”

Chris pictured a father slain, gasping his last breath under his son’s hand. If Derek were both guilty and innocent of the death, the weight upon him must be terrible. “He’s seen the damage he can do.”

Stiles cast him a contemptuous look. “So have I. If Peter was behind it, my vengeance upon him will taste no less sweet for Derek’s qualms. If the king must be destroyed, I pray the Green and Silver will let mine be the hands that do it”

Without warning, a figure suddenly burst through the cataract. Chris supposed it was Derek back already, but was shocked to recognize the panting, heaving, outraged man with scarlet mail and tabard all askew. The king’s champion lunged for the two Merry Wolves and shook them each by a shoulder.

“You,” he sneered. “You two. You two idiots ruined _everything.”_

Stiles collected himself. “We spent your coin the way you should have spent it first, Jackson, you know that. You saw us give it away to the needy.”

“Not the coin!” Jackson shouted. “The purse.” He shook Stiles roughly. _“You_ dropped it on the ground after emptying it of more than it could possibly hold,” -- a shake to Isaac -- “and since I could not claim it, _your_ father picked it up and showed it to the king.”

“Why, because it smelled nice?” Isaac stammered.

“Because it was magicked,” the red knight roared. “With one of the cleverest enchantments devised in years. And now Peter’s sniffed out its source!” He took a deep breath and whirled around to the entrance, where Derek suddenly stood.

“Hale Derek,” snarled Jackson Scarlet. “I have been your faithful servant these many years. Now pay me my due. I saved _Scott’s_ lady from the Red King, and now _you_ must save _mine.”_


	8. The Tale of the Scarlet Champion

_Four years ago, three days after Isaac joined the Merry Wolves_

Friar Stiles walked ahead of the pack on their way from the craggy rocks near their home to the soft pine forests of the Woodlands. The path was thickly carpeted with fallen needles that shushed underfoot, damp from a recent rain. He could faintly hear Derek and Scott instructing their newest wolf cub on his powers, and he was not much interested.  Derek’s halting directions to Scott two years ago had been a welcome distraction from their collective grief, which was all the more reason for Stiles to avoid revisiting it now.

He concentrated instead on sending two of his sparks ahead, silver leaves rustling alongside the path as if they'd been blown there. The arboreal scouts would alert him to any humans they might meet.

Friar Stiles would have liked to turn this idle walk to the happy pastime of splitting off yet another spark from his matrix. The journey into his mind’s eye was a pleasant diversion. Gazing within, he could see the many possible sparks that still seemed fused into one congealed mass, wrapped together as tightly as the petals of a rosebud. It took painstaking labor and study to dislodge each new spark as he found it. Over the course of many months he would worry the round gray matrix as if he were searching for a single loose stone in the wall of Arcandrey Castle. The process was taxing, but each removal was as gratifying as finally pulling a loose tooth.

Normally, on a journey of this length, he would have given the outer world only enough attention to steer himself, otherwise engrossed by his inner cosmos. Today, however, Derek had strictly forbidden it, and for once Stiles let caution take the better part of valor. Wrenching a spark loose took much from him;  it would not do to accidentally drain his strength before the coming fight.

Stiles felt a tug on his awareness and slowed his pace, gazing into the vision of what his sparks had found. Hastily he shushed the others and cast an image by stretching one of his silver leaves into a reflective surface so they could see as well.

There was a large, pompous-looking man, resplendent in scarlet mail. He was talking to a handsome youth who led a fine red roan horse which drew a cart behind it. From the look on the young man’s face, the knight had been talking for some considerable time.  

“That’s the king’s champion!” Scott whispered.

“So you see, Jackson, if you want to come up in the world, you’re going about it all the wrong way,” the man rambled affably. “You’re probably, what, three years out from your first tournament? A fine piece of horseflesh like this and you just leave her to pasture? You should be renting her out, collecting fees from every knight who rides her. You could demand double or triple your price if the knight wins, because he’ll pay you from the prize, see? And then they'll beg to pay you more to ride a winner. I’d cut a fine figure at the next tourney, the red champ on a red roan, eh? Leaving her in the stables just isn’t efficient.”

“Portia is happy in the fields,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve trained her to my hand and kept her fit after my duties. She’ll be waiting for me when I join the lists. I won’t have her broken down by some lout with hands like anvils, too uncouth to lead her as she deserves.”

"I know him," Isaac remarked. "He is often in close company with the king."

“That’s Jackson!” Scott exclaimed. “He became a novice squire while I was a page, but he put on airs because he’d once fostered to a wealthy family. Nasty brute.”

“I remember him,” Stiles agreed. “I heard he was reduced to servitude after his father gambled away their fortune.”

“By his livery, he must be my uncle’s squire,” Derek remarked. “Peter must not value him too highly to risk his neck on a mission like this.”

“King Peter thinks the world of my services, and would not ask me to risk my future livelihood by giving up my mount, Finstock” Jackson said airily. But Stiles noticed his hand curl protectively around the horse’s lead.

Derek nudged Stiles. “Show us the treasure.” Stiles concentrated and adjusted the view to show a comically large chest being pulled on a rough wooden cart that looked like a repurposed hay barrow.

Isaac groaned. “That chest is my father’s handiwork,” he explained. “He has the king’s confidence and is eager to please him, so there may be all manner of secrets woven within it.”

“Peter’s usually more subtle than this,” Derek commented. “‘As a lure, ‘tis rather cack-handed. What’s to stop us from pushing his guardians aside and running off with it?”

“The chest itself must be a trap,” Scott reasoned. “It must be enchanted or protected in some way.”

Derek turned to his mage. “Friar Stiles, will you be able to detect any trickery?”

“There’s nothing to it,” Stiles chuckled. “I’ll barely have to waste a spark on the effort.”

“Very well,” Derek said, “then you and Scott forge ahead. In truth, the two of you may be able to overpower these worthies on your own. But don’t harm them unduly,” he warned. “The Green and Silver have been benevolent so far, but we must stay true to our purpose.” Scott nodded solemnly, and the young mage and beta ran ahead.

They slowed once Stiles’ sentries alerted him they were just beyond sight. Creeping behind a small copse of trees, they waited until the treasure and its two guards were just in view. Scott poised to leap, while Stiles leaned out quietly and flicked a tiny oak leaf so that it spun edge over edge through the air and lodged in the side of the chest.

In the next moment his head was swimming, and he was gasping for air. A web of chains had flown outward from around the chest, flying towards Scott and Stiles and ensnaring each of them in loops of iron. One chain struck Stiles sharply across the throat and the wind was momentarily choked out of him.

“Stiles?” Scott murmured, stunned. “Stiles?”

“Not such a clever Friar now, are you?” the champion said, looming suddenly into Stiles’ wavering vision. He tugged at something with a gauntleted hand, and Stiles’ head cleared just enough to see Derek and Isaac racing into view, claws extended. Stiles and Scott were entirely bound from head to toe, and Stiles would have strangled had Finstock not loosened the length around his throat.

The older knight also saw the Merry Wolves’ approach, and snatched out his dagger to hold at Stiles’ neck. “The chain's drained him to dead weight, but I can make that a permanent condition,” he leered. “Of course, the Royal Alpha plans to make it a permanent condition for all of you, so maybe you want me to do it now and cut out the middleman. or, I guess that would be, cut _in_ the middleman, since I would be --” There was a sudden smell of sweet clean rushes like the bedding in the Great Hall. Abruptly Finstock stopped talking and sagged to the forest floor in a bustle of crimson mail.

Stiles stared open-mouthed at Jackson, who stood just behind the man. “You killed him!” he squeaked.

“No I didn’t,” Jackson said defensively. “It’s a potion. He’ll sleep for a few hours, that’s all.” He held up a delicate perfume atomizer in demonstration.

“Why would you do that for us?” Derek asked. Behind him, Isaac was tugging at the chains trapping Scott. There was a flash of blue, Scott cried out, and Isaac jerked his hands back. “Ouch, it stings,” he cried. Stiles noticed that Jackson watched Isaac’s every movement with interest.

“The chains and their defenses are the Royal Mage’s spell,” he remarked. “Her strike for the day, as you can see. She always hides tricks inside of traps for the unwary. But you’d know that, wouldn’t you, my lord?” he said to Derek, in an unpleasantly obsequious manner.

Stiles could have told him that smarmy attitude would go nowhere with Lord Derek Hale, and especially not if it was to do with Mistress Kate. He could see it written in the lines on Derek’s face. “What. Do you want,” Derek said.

Jackson fell to one knee. “I want to be a werewolf, my lord,” he said, and Stiles felt his own mouth fall open.

He put it to use. “You sneaky jumped-up varlet,” Stiles said, “What on earth makes you think that’s even possible?”

Jackson gave him a look that could cut ice. “I have my reasons,” he said, with a speaking glance over to where Isaac was working industriously to help Scott.

Stiles was rather proud of the gravedigger’s son once he took measure of his handiwork. Undaunted by Kate’s miniature lightning, Isaac had assembled rudimentary potholders out of some broadbladed saw-grass and used it to get a grip on a length of the chain which had enough give to safely lift away from Scott’s body. From there, he was worrying the stout metal back and forth in his hands, and would likely snap the link before much longer.

Derek frowned with suspicion. “But we only turned Isaac two nights ago, and there has been no opportunity for word to reach the castle.” He locked troubled eyes upon Stiles, who shared his concern. They'd been so certain the enchanted cave was entirely shielded from their enemies' sight. Were they wrong?

But Jackson relieved them in the next moment, with the most sincerity Stiles had heard from him yet. “Nay, my lord, I did not know of the boy’s fate though he stands as confirmation. I bring my own observation of the Royal Alpha. As his squire since his ascension I have spent two years in close quarters with him. He is powerful, yes, but his feats seem no greater than those reported of him when he was a beta. Nor have I seen him do anything to measure up to the marvels my foster parent, Lord Martin, described in his admiration of your mother Queen Talia, when she bore the Royal Alpha power. If you’ll pardon my saying so, Lord Derek, the only Alpha quality that King Peter bears is the very red of his eyes.”

Stiles’ heart leapt to hear his own deduction of Peter’s true status, confirmed by Isaac’s turning, averred once again by such an unlikely source. He looked upon Jackson with warmer regard. But Derek was already shaking his head, and Stiles groaned.

“If the Royal Alpha power is not with my uncle, then where is it?” he said, flashing his own blue eyes. “We would have heard if it had traveled to Werlanden, or even further. A claimant would have appeared by now. Peter was ill when he attained the power, he may simply be weaker than other alphas.”

“Then if he is weaker, perhaps --” Jackson said eagerly. But from his truss, Stiles caught his eye and shook his head severely. There was no chance that Derek would hear any word of marching upon the castle given his own infirmity. The Green and Silver could attest, Stiles had made this argument himself enough times to know.

Jackson’s face closed. “Perhaps you will think differently once you have seen the treasure Peter sent to lure you, from coffers that could have been spent on those in need."

Derek barked a mirthless laugh. "You say there is something left in that chest other than traps for the unwary?"

"Of course, my lord," Jackson said smoothly. "The king feared you might detect if it were empty. Lady Kate quite expended herself preparing her chains. I swear, there are no other enchantments upon the chest."

Stiles could tell the young man had not won Derek’s trust, but there must have been no lie in his speech, for he gestured to Jackson.  "You open it."

Jackson obeyed, kneeling directly before the chest and thumbing open the latch.  He stepped to the side to demonstrate that it was full of silver coin, even plunging a hand in and raking it around to show it went to the bottom. "It is pure, my lord."

"Stop calling me that," Derek snapped absently.  "Bring it here."

Jackson scoffed.  "You think uncommon well of me, my --"

"Hale Derek," Stiles told him pertly.

"Hale Derek," Jackson said with a quiet smile. "I could never lift the chest on my own. It took four men to set it in place. Even Peter would struggle."

Again Derek must have heard no lie. "Isaac," he called, and the lad dropped his labor to hasten to assist. Derek and Isaac moved to either side of the chest, where there were stout iron handles, and made to lift it.

At the last moment, Stiles saw the tense coil of Jackson’s spine. “Derek, wait!” he cried. But it was too late. As the chest rose a great plume of dust streamed straight up into the air, high above the two wolves’ heads, and landed around them in a perfect circle.

Meanwhile Stiles watched helplessly from his bonds as Jackson dove across the line, executing a practiced roll to stand up safely on the other side. Isaac’s shock was clear as he pounded thin air and found himself trapped behind an invisible wall.

“Mountain ash,” Stiles groaned, unable to hide a tinge of admiration at the squire’s skewed morality. “No further enchantment laid upon the chest, eh? All the magic went into the cart?”

“Actually, it’s purely mechanical,” Jackson smirked. He looked at Isaac. “Your father can make clever use of a leaf spring when he’s in a temper.”

“He can do everything cleverly when he’s in a temper, else he’d never get anything done,” Isaac agreed glumly, and Stiles wanted to hug him.

Stiles considered the situation for a moment: Scott still struggling in his chains, Isaac and Derek penned until they were released, himself emptied of even his smallest spark, though he could feel his drained powers just beginning to replenish.

Then he took stock of the three werewolves again, and started to laugh. “Oh Jackson,” he snickered, “you lack-wit. How exactly do you plan to get what you want?”

Stiles yelped as Jackson crouched behind and pulled him up against him, his back to the squire’s muscled chest. “You’ll bite me the way you did Lahey’s boy,” he threatened Derek, “or I’ll snap your mage’s neck.”

“Always manhandling the mage,” Stiles sighed.

Scott looked up at him from his ridiculous trussing. “Without your powers, you are rather like a turtle on its back,” he said. “Any churl would find it tempting.”  

“Yes, very well, Jackson, you’ve penned your wolf and now what,” Stiles demanded. “How exactly will you force him to bite you without crossing the line? And Scott too,” he said generously. “Blue and yellow together, of course.”

Jackson blustered. “If he wants you to live, I’ll just stick my arm in, and…” he trailed off.

“Yes,” Stiles agreed, “and once he’s dragged you in, he can bite it clean off and beat you to death with the bony end. No offense, Derek,” he called. Derek could be touchy about carnage.

Derek merely fixed Jackson with a predatory stare, and waited until the young man was caught like a mouse in sight of a hawk. “You can’t get what you want without our help,” he said. “You’ve done nothing to deserve our trust. Why should we give you this power? Why do you need it?”

“Jackson likes to be the best at everything,” Scott called. “You should have seen him throwing elbows at the servants’ egg and spoon race. He just wants to be the strongest.”

“That’s hardly the point,” Jackson said. “Once I’m back at the castle, I can --”

“But you won’t be going back to the castle, will you,” Derek said softly. Stiles was powerfully reminded that Derek was bred to rule. “You’d be an outlaw like the rest of us. Is court life under Peter so terrible that you would prefer to give up everything?”

“Yes,” Jackson said immediately. Then, “but I can’t leave the castle, I must see to my responsibilities.”

“Peter will sniff you out in an instant,” Derek said. “Did you not realize that we can detect one another by scent?”

From the squire’s face, Stiles suspected that Jackson had not considered this. “Why were you planning to stay in the castle, Jackson?” Derek asked. “Isaac came to us knowing he’d never return. What remains that is so important to you?”

Jackson glanced over at Finstock. “I...I can’t leave now,” he stammered. “I’d need a way to hide. But I have to be strong enough to fight.”

“Oh,” Stiles groaned, scowling at the prone and snoring Finstock. “I see it. You don’t want to be Peter’s squire much longer, do you? You want to be his next champion. When the competition is all human, a secret wolf would have all the advantage. You dirty cheat,” he said approvingly.

“Yes, that’s it,” Jackson quickly agreed. “His champion. A knight strong enough to be his champion could win every fight that matters.” He turned to Derek. “Please, Lord Derek -- Hale Derek. I would stay in the castle, but I would be your faithful servant. Please make me one of you.”

Derek’s deep-set eyes were hooded from view as he considered the squire’s request. “There would be conditions,” he said.

Jackson nodded eagerly. “Anything, my lord.”

“If Friar Stiles succeeds in masking your scent, you will have an unfair advantage at the lists,” Derek said. “You would, in effect, be stealing your winnings from the other knights.“

“Applying years of skill and training with more force than expected is hardly stealing,” Jackson objected.

“So you would give the profit of your theft to the poor, as we do,” Derek continued. _“All_ of it.”

Jackson flinched, but seemed less cast down by the thought than Stiles would have guessed. “Yes, alright, all of it.”

“You would report to us regularly, as our eyes and ears in the castle,” Derek said.

“Of course,” Jackson said.

Derek looked at him shrewdly. “You agree so readily, yet you have shown how cleverly you lie. There is one more duty you must perform to prove the sincerity of your oath. Your horse.”

Jackson looked startled. “I’m sorry?”

“You have a very fine mare, one you clearly value. To prove you are one of us you must show your willingness to sacrifice her.”

Jackson went absolutely rigid at the thought. Stiles was certain that the squire would protest that the horse was his future livelihood in the very tournaments he craved to win.

But instead he shook himself, and went around to the front of the cart where the horse waited placidly. He unhitched her harness and led her around the circle to face Derek, careful that she did not break the line of ash with a stray hoof. He proffered the lead towards Derek, holding it so the rope crossed over the line. “She is yours, my lord.”

Stiles had never seen Derek -- the real Derek -- look so cold. If he'd had his strike, Stiles might well have flung him into the river again. “When I said ‘sacrifice,’ I meant you must make a _true_ sacrifice, to prove your faith before the Green and Silver."

Jackson drew closer to the horse, shocked. “My lord, no! ‘Twould be madness to demand such a waste. What other creature would stay so calm in such a fracas,” he gestured around them. “Portia has no fear of werewolves, or of magic. She has been mine since before she was foaled, the only thing the sheriff could secure for me from my father's losses. She is gentle, yet lionhearted, and will follow your every command. No prince ever sat a finer mount. Please, my lord, you must take her for your own.”

Stiles saw tears in the squire's eyes, but Derek was unmoved. “I will not. Make your choice.” His eyes flashed.

Stiles stared at the blue-eyed werewolf. Though he often looked fierce, Derek was seldom ruthless, and never cruel. Was it possible that he was not himself? Stiles looked desperately for a sign, knowing that Isaac could be in grave danger. In the grip of his madness, Derek had no conscience.  But Derek only stood regally still, his hands calm at his sides.

With a final look at Derek, Jackson led his horse a small distance away, as if for privacy. Stiles had an agonizingly clear view of their congress, however, as the young man blew gently into the horse’s nostrils and combed his fingers through her mane. He dug into his pocket and brought out a few lumps of sugar, which he cupped in his palm for her to take. His other hand hovered over the dagger strapped at his waist.

“Derek,” Scott said uncomfortably. “you can’t mean this.”

Stiles agreed. “Derek, don’t make him do it.” He looked over to see that Isaac was crying fat, silent tears.

Jackson cradled the horse’s head to his breast, the dagger now in his hand. “Shh, girl,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry, my darling, so sorry, but you understand why I must. I swear it will be quick. ” His hand trembling, he raised the knife to strike.

_“Stop!”_

At Derek’s command, Jackson threw the knife aside and fell to his knees, his face buried in his hands. He was sobbing openly, Stiles saw.

“You love that horse more than anything in the world, ‘tis plain to see,” Derek said. “Tell me truly, why you would trade her for the bite.”

Jackson raised his head. “More than any _thing,”_ he said defiantly through hitching breaths, “but not more than any _one._ I love Portia as I love myself, but I love my lady more.”

"You would slay your horse to win a _girl?"_ Isaac demanded, scandalized.

Jackson looked at him.  "Not to win her," he said sincerely. "Since my father's death in penury, she is far above me. Though I win a hundred tourneys I could never be worthy of her hand. But to win the strength to protect her -- yes, this I must do."

"What protection could she possibly need that is worth the cost?" Stiles asked.

"These are dangerous times for all,” Jackson said, "but much more so for some."

He did not seem inclined to go on, but Scott had one of those rare flashes of insight that were Stiles’ eternal delight. "She's a mage," he said, looking at the slumbering Finstock. "That was her scented spell that you used. She’s a mage like Stiles."

"She’s a mage unlike any other," Jackson snapped. "She is clever and extraordinary and the greatest of her class.  But these are dangerous days even for the pocket conjurors with scarcely two sparks to rub together."

Isaac's eyes widened. "Friar Harris," he said. "But he got drunk, and fell in the horse trough."

"Yes, an accident that befell him _accidentally,_ after he had several furtive conversations with the king," Jackson said. "I know not what they discussed. But I saw the merchant mage last week demonstrate some minor tricks to Peter before he inhaled his last meal, as well. Mages summoned to the king's court die. Somehow only Mistress Kate survives."

"If your lady is so gifted, why has Peter not taken her already?" Derek asked.

Jackson shrugged. "He believes her talent to be negligible, not worth the cost of discommoding her father. Tis true, her matrix-shade shows only a minor strike and two lesser sparks. But what she can do with them, the wonders she creates! This is the least of them," he said, waving the atomizer. "A week's worth of healthful sleep in a bottle, which cost only a spark to produce! She could set these Woodlands ablaze with her strike, if she chose," he said proudly. "Her powers lie not in her force, but in her ingenuity."

"You know her well," Derek remarked. Stiles sighed with relief; his friend's wary observations were more like himself.

The squire’s haughty features turned soft and fond. "I fostered with her family, and we played together as children. I was her first subject; she tested each new spell on me. I can still predict when the snows will come by the ache." He flexed a knee. "She practiced in secret, even away from her family.  Only I and, later, her boon companion Maid Allison, knew the extent of her gifts. Allison is sworn to silence; she keeps her own counsel and Lydia's as well."

Derek cleared his throat, and pressed his hand against the invisible barrier. "If you wish to join us, then trust us to choose your company freely.”

Without hesitation, Jackson bent forward and parted the mountain ash. At Derek’s nudge Isaac ran back to his labor and in a moment Scott was free. Jackson next leaned over Stiles, seeking the end of the chain that bound him.

Stiles took inventory of his power, however, and realized with pleasure he had a single spark primed to burn. The links under Jackson’s gloved hands turned to ice, and as he flexed they abruptly shattered. “Your lady is not the only mage with secrets,” he remarked as his bonds fell free. “I should quite like to meet her.” At Jackson’s thunderous look he added “Strictly mage to mage, of course! Come now, who would not be curious?”

Jackson turned to Derek. “Now will you bite me?”

“Let’s do it in the cave,” Scott said. “Now that we know it works, we’d better shield the transformation from any observers. I’ll help.”

“The True Archer can also bite me,” Jackson said drily.

“What do we do with this one?” Stiles asked, nudging Finstock with a toe.

“He’ll tell what he saw to the king,” Isaac said, face screwed up with worry. “If he has any suspicions of Jackson, there could be trouble.”

“Especially since the red knight will awaken soon, but your first training must last several days, at least,” Derek said. “We need a way to explain your absence.”

“They know you are a mage,” Jackson said to Stiles. He looked down at the broken chains. “They know your gifts must be unusual, though no one can understand how. I can say that Kate’s trap failed somehow, and you were able to get free. It’s the truth in a way,” he said, warming to his subject, “so the king won’t detect the lie.”

“Lying to werewolves seems to be a specialty of yours,” Stiles murmured.

“As the Red King’s squire? More of a necessity,” Jackson said.

Stiles hunched down beside the prone knight and thought. “We can maintain Finstock’s enchanted sleep to keep him out of the way while you train. When he wakes up after a week of slumber, he’ll assume you suffered the same fate and you can let him tell the tale at court. If you don’t speak of it yourself, Peter won’t detect that falsehood, either.”

“I see I’m not the only one with practice lying to werewolves,” Jackson said, smirking.

“It passes the time,” Stiles shrugged. “Now, get your horse and hitch her up --”

_“I’ll_ draw the cart,” Isaac said stoutly. “That poor horse has been through enough today.”

“Very well,” Stiles directed. “Scott, grab up Finstock, Isaac take the cart, Jackson bring the horse, and we’re off.”

They walked through the Woodlands back towards their home, exchanging pleasantries about what to do with the small fortune in silver they had acquired. It must all be given away, of course, but the group had a spirited argument over what distribution would most thoroughly repay King Peter for his offensive interest. Finally they came to the wild water crashing upon the boulder, and Derek rounded on Jackson.

“This may seem peculiar,” he said. “But the entrance to our hideout sits under the place where the water falls white against the rock. Can you picture it?” Jackson nodded.

“Good. Now, we need a way to cross over the river and pass through the cave’s entrance. Stand here until you see that passage with your mind’s eye, so that you can find it always.”

Perplexed, Jackson closed his eyes, and shook his head after a moment. “I don’t understand, my lord,” he said.

But Stiles hurried forward to peek, and hooted with laughter. “You don’t make things easy on yourself, do you?” he asked fondly. It was as if Jackson had conjured two bridges. For half the span, the bridge was wide, smooth stone that looked well-appointed. Then it abruptly narrowed into a rickety wooden bridge that looked carelessly slapped together. Stiles could only hope that it was not the Green and Silver’s secret purpose to drown them for one incautious step. “I doubt I’ll take your bridge any more than Isaac’s,” he remarked. “Perhaps once you’ve proven yourselves, the Green and Silver will grant you a better one.”

“He’s hardly the only one due for a change,” Scott remonstrated. “The last time I had to find your bridge of air, I nearly fell to my death."

“True enough,” Stiles said. “The Green and Silver do seem to give all of us the entry that suits our inner selves. Derek, you will have to carry the horse.”

“Why, when she’ll stay in the stable?” Jackson asked, and pointed back at the bridge. Stiles turned, and now saw that the wider part of Jackson’s bridge was mostly filled with a graceful wooden building. He ran inside, to find open stalls laden with piles of sweet grasses. A long wooden trough caught drips of clear water from the river’s spray. Stiles wondered to see his own mount and Derek’s monstrous charger Striver munching placidly. Then he burst out laughing as Scott’s pale mare Moonstruck appeared alongside Portia, as if she had always been there.

Stiles patted his own Firefly's nose as he looked around at the gracious surroundings. It was clear every appointment was made for the horses’ comfort. “No more wet nights out in the forest for you, eh?”

As the other Merry Wolves entered, Friar Stiles gave a low whistle.“Truly, your lady Lydia is fortunate to have you," he said with a rush of affection. "When our Jackson gives his heart he does so fully."


	9. Hale Derek, Boxed in Shadows

_Present day, in the cave just after Jackson's arrival_

“My lady Lydia must rue the day she met me,” Jackson Scarlet said, spinning on his allies in the Merry Wolves’ cave. The others listened attentively. What Chris had taken to be hostility among the young men now looked more like the banter between brothers. "She came to her dearest friend's aid and is repaid with a forced betrothal to King Peter."

"Can't she flee the keep?" Isaac asked.

Jackson shook his head. "Peter has grown more suspicious since his promised bride evaded her marriage, and locked Lydia in the dungeon. I did not like to leave her there with Mistress Kate running loose, but take cold comfort in the fact that not even she can break in or out of the mage cell."

Chris started at the mention of his daughter. "Allison _chose_ to avoid her marriage,” he said, and felt some small relief when the company did not deny it. “And Kate," he added, “what has she to do with all of this?” It was not that he could not imagine his sister harming another, but he did not think it was like her to lash out without some purpose.

Friar Stiles broke the silence first. “We think Peter intends to replace her as his Royal Mage. They both ascended to their high positions at the same time, and we may never know all of the foul deeds they have conspired together. But now, their interests have diverged.”

“They are each frequently away from the castle,” Jackson said, pacing as he trailed his fingers along the long, narrow wall, “on long journeys away from the other. I have accompanied Peter on some of his excursions and it seemed to me that we wandered with the purpose of flushing out new mages who might measure up to your sister’s abilities.”

“With her great strike and four major sparks, surely Kate is the most powerful mage in the land,” Chris said. He half-wondered if Friar Stiles would take offense at this, but the young man only shrugged.

“Perhaps, but that fact is difficult to confirm,” Jackson said sourly, “since half of the mages we pursued had expired under unremarkable circumstances shortly before our arrival. The rest of them, he always finds wanting. Mistress Kate welcomes Peter effusively upon his return every time, while he swallows back his bilious rage. Without a mage in hand to replace her, I do not believe he dares act against her. Their fates are too closely intertwined.”

“He may not even care if the mage is truly her equal,” Friar Stiles said. “I doubt he intends them to duel. But ‘tis clear that Kate performs some special service for him which he is hard-pressed to replace.”

“Such as…” Chris said.

“Oh, not what you’re thinking. At least, I don’t think so.” Stiles wrinkled his nose. “You’d smell it on them, wouldn’t you, Jackson?”

“I had my suspicions when I first became Peter’s squire,” Jackson said, eyes sliding over to Derek. “But since I was bitten I have smelled nothing on him toward her but choler and bile. She enjoys her amorous pursuits around the court,” -- Jackson’s lips tightened -- “but lately she reeks only of sanguine self-regard. Mistress Kate has been intensely pleased about something for weeks.” He turned to Chris. “Her satisfaction came to a head on the morning you arrived.”

Isaac turned to him as well.  "You don’t seem surprised that we would talk of the Royal Mage in this way. Have you so little feeling for your own blood?"

Chris shook his head. "Love for my sister does not blind me to her faults. I need not believe the worst of Kate to believe she and Peter may wish to be rid of each other."

"The time has come to be rid of them both," Jackson Scarlet snapped.  He turned to Derek and spoke urgently. "Hale Derek. Surely now you must admit that our moment has come. We must rescue Lydia, but the work will require our combined forces. You are our greatest fighter. You alone truly unite the endurance of a wolf and the skill of a man. And” -- he waved a hand about the cave -- “you bear the favor of the Green and Silver, far above any of us. Come with us. Help us win the fight. Lead us, as you were destined to do.”

Derek shook his head somberly, his sculpted face etched with sorrow. “You know what will happen if I try,” he said.

"I know what will happen if you _fail!"_ Jackson said sharply. "How can you leave the people of Arcandrey to Peter? To Kate! To Deucalion himself, should they tear each other apart? How can you abandon them when you alone can save them?" The red knight’s voice rose to a bellow. "YOU, WHO COULD BE _KING!"_

It was as though none had dared to speak the words aloud before. The Merry Wolves, normally so vibrant, all froze as Jackson’s voice rang off the stone.

Derek recovered himself first, with a harsh barking laugh. "I, who could be king," he mocked. "You know what they whisper about Lord Derek in the castle, just as the peasants name me for what they see in the forest. A murderer, a blue-eyed kinslayer who slashed his family's throats and burned the evidence behind him.”

Isaac stepped forward. “I once heard them say that in the keep,” he said shyly. “But I also heard the tales of the mighty giant who slays dragons to save the kingdom, who has aided Arcandrey and its people time and again with his staff and with his heart .”

Stiles spoke. "You must trust people to know what you truly are, Derek. Or at least, to learn it.”

_“What I am_ is the madman who killed your father, Stiles. I wonder that you can stand near me without stopping up your nose."

"You do pong a bit in high summer, 'tis true," Stiles agreed, his tone for once betraying no mirth. "Tis harder when you stop up your ears against me. You did not kill my father! I was unjust ever to blame you. You are no blue-eyed murderer, despite the false testimony of your gaze. If you’ll listen to me for half a moment, I’ll show you what you really are.” The mage rolled up his gray cassock sleeve and stuck out his arm.

“Jackson, bite me,” he commanded. “Isaac, you as well. Prove to Derek what we’ve tried to tell him for years -- it takes more than blue and yellow together to make a green wolf. Maybe now if he sees it, he’ll finally believe us.”

“You’re mad,” Derek breathed, eyes wide with shock. “You know as well as I that no mage can survive the bite! Will you die to make a point?”

Derek made as if to shield Stiles from his own folly, but he and Chris were pushed back against the cave wall with a mighty force.

“Don’t make me waste another spark, we’ll need them,” Stiles said, panting heavily. “Watch and see. Jackson, now.”

Without hesitation, Jackson stepped forward, shifting as he did so. Chris could see the glow of his blue eyes reflected in the whites of Stiles’. He grasped Stiles’ wrist like a courtier, and pressed a gentle bite into the flesh. Stiles’ breath caught. “So there’s the blue,” he said. “Eyes thus colored with hardly more justice than Derek’s.”

“I cannot always act by my own volition, as Peter’s man,” Jackson said gruffly, turning back to his regular form.

“Isaac, now you,” Stiles said. “Just as Scott did, long ago. I can mend whatever small harm you do, don’t worry,” he coaxed.

More hesitantly, the younger wolf followed Jackson’s lead, centering a blood-red mark on Stiles' arm over the first bite.

After a silent minute Stiles waved the wound at Derek. "See, both still here," he said. “Me, too.”

"Perhaps it must be a certain two wolves, or, the prophecy said “mix with faith,” Derek stammered.

"Who could show more faith?" Jackson cried, but Stiles restrained him as Isaac wrapped his arm with muslin.

"The prophecy never said 'mix with faith'" he said gently, "for there never was a prophecy.” He watched a moment as his blood rose to color the pale fabric that bound it with two thin rings of red. “My mother was a dyer, dipping yarn and cloth until she died. She taught me the nursery rhyme her father taught her, to help dyers’ children learn the formulas for colors. It’s all nonsense.”

_Mix red and yellow with love to restore the orange breath._  
_Mix blue and red with knowledge to dispel the purple ghost._  
_Mix blue and yellow with faith to create the green wolf._

“None of it means anything.” He ducked the shocked gazes of the company, busying himself by healing his wound and wiping the blood away with Isaac’s bandage. “We needed to save our new friends, and I needed to know what you were. I guessed then, as I know now, the only _true_ bite's in the Alpha Power."

Derek looked stunned. "You lied to me," he croaked, "You risked both of their lives..."

"Only because I was sure!" Stiles cried. "Sure that the Green and Silver brought them to us for a reason! I’ve tried to tell you so many times, but you refuse to listen."

But Derek was past hearing. "I trusted you," he said, looking wildly around.

"This is useless, and my lady awaits," Jackson said, pulling away from where he leaned on the long wall. "I hoped you would come to your senses and let go of your fears for once, Derek Hale. If you led the kingdom as you lead us, you could be the greatest ruler of the age. But instead you're the same coward you have always been, hiding behind your shame.”  

“Know this," he said, wheeling on his leader.  "When my lady is rid of Peter, we'll not return to hide away in this patronizing sanctum. We will find a place to be free no matter the danger, and I'll be your faithful wolf no longer. With me, boys!" he cried and vanished through the water wall.

Stiles and Isaac did not follow instantly, turning to cajole Derek a little longer. After a moment Chris felt a buzz against his ankle and looked down to see a small coin roll by, just as another one followed it straight through the wall of water to hit him again. He moved to the barrier and stepped out --

\-- and nearly fell off the narrow, rickety wooden bridge where he stood, except for Jackson steadying him.

“What is -- how did,” Chris said. “What happened to the carved stone?”

“Oh, that was _your_ bridge,” Jackson said. He stepped along the wooden beams until they met the wider stone, then turned to keep Chris on the narrow part. “The Green and Silver must favor you as they do Derek. Though I appreciate the amenities of my own entryway.”

The red knight’s face darkened. “We have little time before the others emerge. The strike your sister gave you, do you still have it?”

Chris’s hand went instinctively to the pouch on his belt. “Yes, but I shan’t use it, not after what you’ve said of Kate.”

Jackson fixed him with a hard look. _“Throw it._ I have seen her use that spell many times, in interrogations. For once, she spoke the honest truth -- it dispels lies and deception. It may be the only way to get through to Derek and show him what he truly is. Throw the stone, and undo the lies. Throw the stone, and learn what has become of your daughter.”

“Allison!” Chris gasped. “So she is here? Where is she?”

“Today the cave has narrow walls when it should be wide and open,” Jackson said. “I do not know why its magic has hidden so much from you. But I know you must unveil the truth. Now, back inside with you, so my fellows may join me.”

Chris stepped back through the water, landing easily on the moss bed as he had before. Now that he understood the trickery, he stared at the wall that had so vexed Derek, trying to determine whether it was magic. But in truth it seemed every bit as solid as the others.

Stiles and Isaac crouched over Derek, who sat before them on the table's bench, hunched over with his head down. “I’ll come home when the rescue is over,” Isaac said gently.

Stiles did not speak for a long moment. “I...this could be my best chance to avenge my father.” Derek flinched. “I would have you beside me, if I could.”

But Derek said nothing, and after a moment, the two young men exited the cave. Chris walked over to Derek.

"Is it true?" he asked, his voice shaking. "Is my daughter imprisoned here?"

"There are no prisoners here," Derek said wretchedly.

"None but yourself, you mean." Chris said. "Your movements are not so limited, you have a pleasant company. You think this refuge is a safe haven. And yet I think I have never seen a prisoner so ensnared as you."

Derek struggled to speak. "When one cannot trust one’s self...the few certainties left become more precious than any worldly prize.”

"It seems to me that the more you are guided by others, even the Green and Silver, the more you betray yourself," Chris said sorrowfully. "Our paths have crossed many times through the years.  I have seen you at your worst and your best. Thus I know, Derek, that your friends are right. An outlaw hiding in a cave, committing acts of petty charity -- this is not what you were meant to be."

"This is the most destiny _allows_ me to be," Derek said, flaring up. "Forgive me if I draw what light I can into my cell."

"And my daughter?" Chris asked tightly.  "Is she just another beam of your light?"

Derek’s eyes flickered tellingly at the accursed cave wall. "It was not I who hid her away," he whispered. "I would never have chosen...but I am bound to follow."

"You're bound to the whims of a magic rock," Chris said.  "Well, I don’t trust magic. Never have."

With that, Chris pulled the burgundy stone from its pouch. He raised it over his head and cast it into the fire pit.

Seeing it, Derek’s eyes widened in horror. _"No!"_ he shouted, lunging as if to pull it from the flames .

But it was too late. A flash of silver lightning erupted from the fire. Man and wolf were knocked off their feet.  Both sprawled unconscious, in an enormous, gaping cavern.

***

Stiles, Jackson, and Isaac stood on the bridge in front of the stable. "I wish Scott and Allison were here," Isaac remarked.  "We could use their aim."

"Chris has the means to get them out, I believe," Jackson said. "If he has the stones for it. Now, Friar Stiles, time is of the essence, but you mustn’t waste your power in travel.”

Stiles nodded. “I’ll saddle Firefly,” he said.

“Take Portia,” Jackson said, and the other men gaped at him. He flushed. “She is by far the fastest, and skilled at protecting her rider. She will best preserve your strength. Isaac and I will run beside.”

Stiles stepped toward him. “Thank you, Jackson,” he said. “Here, let me refresh your charm -- more camouflage could be of use.” He reached forward and took the werewolf’s chiseled face in both hands. But instead of a spark, he pressed a tender kiss to his lips. Jackson lifted a brow, but did not pull away.

He patted Jackson’s cheek. “Oh, come now,” he chuckled. “How could I not, when we may be racing to our deaths? But don’t be so nervous. I could not love thee half so well, loved not thee thy lady more.”

Jackson rolled his tongue in his cheek, looking thoughtful. “You have never met Lydia. She is all that I have said, but I may not have adequately conveyed her delight in…experimentation. When the subject appeals to her, of course.”

Isaac laughed at Stiles’s stunned expression. “Tis a wonder, our Friar is speechless,” he said.

“Consider it motivation for the battle ahead,” Jackson Scarlet said, leading out his magnificent red roan, which Stiles mounted. He clapped the Friar’s ankle, and shifted. “And now, Merry Wolves, to the fight!”


	10. The Tale of the Pack of Broken Destinies

_Present day: after throwing Kate’s magic strike to reveal the truth hidden by Derek's cave, Chris awakes_

When Chris awoke, he lay on his back in an open clearing at midday. He squinted against the bright sun just ahead; his head felt fogged as though he had not fully roused from a deep sleep.

Looking around, he recognized the Arcandrey riverbank, not too far downstream from the island. The river Twiene was wider and calmer here, with no sign of whitewater. He was uncertain how he had gotten so far from Derek’s lair, unless flung by Kate’s strike.

Then he realized that although the land was open and bright, he could still see the cave wrapped around him. The ceiling curved far above his head, as though the outdoors and even the sunlight were a picture painted upon it.

He tried to understand the confluence without success, until suddenly his attention was caught by a pile of bodies that appeared from thin air and landed with much force upon the earth, some yards away.

Chris could make out Friar Stiles in his cassock, and another boy he did not know. Magic was clearly afoot, for they were shockingly young, surely not yet thirteen. They were each protectively enfolded in the arms of a third body, which lay still and obviously dead. Seeing this, both boys began to wail their grief.

Chris shifted for a better view and recognized the third man as Master Deaton, Talia’s Royal Mage. The mage’s hands were twisted with strain where they peeked from the sleeves of his long silver cassock. Even in death, his face was rigid as though he had just exerted himself beyond the point of agony. The boy who Chris did not know patted Deaton’s face gently and then collapsed on his chest, weeping.

The young Lord Derek Hale pulled himself from under the heap and hunched a few feet away. He gulped heavily, his arms and chest soaked with fresh blood. He looked much the same as he had the night that he killed his father, even wearing the same clothes. This must be the day after Chris had seen him at the gatehouse, then. Sixteen-year-old Derek had just slaughtered his family, and escaped the keep with Deaton’s help.

Moreover, Chris now recognized the confused, aghast expression on Derek’s face, and could deduce the truth. Lord Hale had suffered one of his spells back at the castle, and now he was returning from madness to face the horror he had done. Chris had had years to become accustomed to the kingdom’s losses, but the pain and confusion returned full force at the sight of Derek’s fresh anguish.

Derek crawled a few feet closer to the Twiene and vomited copiously over the bank, heaving long after he was dry. Young Stiles came up behind him in fury, tears still running down his face. He shouted something, an accusation, and kicked Derek hard in the side.

Derek stayed on his knees and bowed his head. Chris had a feeling he never wanted to rise again. Indeed, he could clearly read the words on Derek’s lips, and feel their sincerity from six years away:

_“Kill me.”_

Despite his fury, the young Friar hove back in shock, and his rage dissolved into uncertainty. The other boy, the one Chris did not recognize, staggered up between them. Chris watched, mystified, as he raised his shirt to show bloody claw marks below his ribs, also drawing back his collar to show a smaller bite staining his shoulder. Wonderingly, Stiles wiped the raw blood away from both wounds, to reveal pristine skin beneath. The boy looked fearful as he spoke entreatingly to Derek.

Chris could understand his concern. In Arcandrey, under the long, controlled reign of the Hales, bitten wolves had always been rare, and an omega’s life was perilous. The lad would need a mentor to guide him through his change, and there was clearly only one to be found.  

Chris was proud to see that faced with the boy’s need, Derek did not hesitate. Though still ashen and trembling, devastated and hardly more than a lad himself, he knelt and bowed his head to both boys. Chris did not need to hear the terms of Derek’s oath of protection and loyalty, to know they had been carried out in full.

The light around Chris flickered, and when the cave renewed its phantasms he found himself somewhere in the outer oak forest, in autumn with brown leaves crunching underfoot. In the brown and gray surroundings it took him a moment to find the small pack again. Friar Stiles was still in his silver cassock, though it was now inches too short around the wrists and ankles. Derek had discarded all of his ruined lordly raiment for the brown homespun of a peasant. He was taller and his shoulders broader than before -- Chris suspected his growth came from work with the massive oak staff he carried in one loosely curled arm.  Somehow the third boy had found an entire outfit of liberty green that hung on his spare frame. He had slung a longbow and quiver of arrows over his shoulder.

Chris watched as the small pack came upon a squadron of soldiers protecting a tax collector. The young pack caught the knaves in the act of arresting a pair of young women who had lost their home to the king’s increased rents, and camped illicitly in the royal forests. Though the women’s plight was common, Chris knew that King Peter did not share Talia’s mercy, and would see them hanged without thought.

With gestures, Derek directed Stiles and the young archer to stay well back from the soldiers. They seemed eager to join the fray, but Chris respected Derek’s insistence to take the most risk upon himself as the oldest and the evident leader of the trio. As Derek waylaid the squadron, it appeared the novice werewolf was likely handier with a bow and arrow than he was with his new claws, and his bolts helped turn the tide of the ensuing skirmish to victory.

With the combatants well-trounced, Friar Stiles set his oak leaf sparks -- there seemed to be only three of them, now -- to sift through the squadron’s possessions. With glee, he found a quantity of coin sewn into the tax collector’s cape. He had already turned the cape into a carrying pouch when Derek intervened. Stiles protested, so forcefully Chris fancied he could hear.

_“But!”_ the mage squawked, _“we have no place to live, we’re constantly on the run. We won it fair and square!”_

Derek would not hear it. _“We three have the power to take whatever we please,”_ he said. _“Honor lies in keeping only what we truly earn, and giving all we can to those who need it more. There can be no justice in stealing from the rich, unless we give our takings to the poor.”_ He took Stiles’ pouch and handed it to the young women, who were overcome. _“Use this to pay back the rents on your lost cottage.”_

_“Oh, fine,”_ Stiles groaned, “they _can keep a roof over their heads,_ _while_ we’ll _spend another night reading our fortunes in the stars.”_

_“Courage,”_ Derek straightened himself regally, the other boys unconsciously mimicking his stance. _“Despite our cruel destiny, we must keep faith that the Green and Silver will provide.”_

The pictures on the cave wall shifted once again, from autumn day into midwinter night. Chris became immersed in yet another tale, which showed how Derek had found the cave. He had brought an offering of vervain to Deaton’s grave overlooking the river, when an enormous full moon illuminated the magical island, beams of silver lancing through the branches of the massive oak. A handsome, expansive bridge appeared and Derek followed it in wonder to the cave’s entrance.

Suddenly, the vision on the cave walls froze and seemed to shatter, leaving only gray rock behind. Chris heard a throat clear behind him.

“Derek?” he said, whirling around to find no one. Then, more tentatively, “Allison?”

“No, neither,” said Gerard Argent, appearing from out of the darkness. “Before you see them again, there are things we must discuss.”

***

Chris had been one-and-twenty when Gerard died in his dungeon cell, shortly before he was stationed at the border with a wife and child of his own.

Since he was ten, he had spent most of his life trying to live down the shame of his father's despicable acts against crown and country.  Even now he could not explain what the man had wanted to accomplish in his traitorous attempt to overthrow Queen Talia. His attack was miraculously forestalled by Master Deaton, the Royal Mage who had supplanted Gerard's own position. Chris sensed Gerard's greatest outrage was against his hated destiny, to be put aside for a supposedly weaker mage after Talia’s ascension.

Now he looked upon his father’s shade, pale and streaming pearl-black ichor from every orifice. Gerard looked as empty as Chris felt at the sight of him -- unsure whether to love the father who raised him, or hate the powerful mage who despised his human son’s weakness. "Why have you come here?" he asked the specter of his childhood.

"Come here?" Gerard mocked him. "Tis the curse of one enslaved by the accursed Green and Silver."

"What do you mean?" Chris asked.

"I am their servant, bound to come when they call," Gerard said. "Indeed I have been since the day you were born. They have sent me to you as their emissary, hoping to make peace with the pack of the broken destiny. They who have no tongues bid me speak for them, for I was the one who broke it."

Chris was mystified, and wondered if he might be dreaming. When physical, his father’s magic had always taken the form of black ink, much as his sister’s took the form of purple stones and Friar Stiles’ took the form of silver oak leaves. However, even in death he had never seen his father lose control of the black streams that now ran in runnels down his face and dripped off his fingers.

Gerard stroked his hand down the bare cave wall, and the stone reshaped itself into a comfortable bench that matched the style of the Merry Wolves’ rough table. His father sank down with a blissful sigh and motioned for Chris to join him. Grudgingly, Chris did so, put off by the way that Derek’s home seemed to accommodate Gerard so readily.

Undeterred, Gerard launched into his telling. "Long before your birth, when the beast from Werlanden proclaimed it was his grand destiny to unite our kingdoms by conquering Arcandrey, I knew him for the charlatan he was. When the Demon Alpha’s messengers first announced his coming, I was still permitted to stand below Talia and that pocket conjurer she raised into my rightful position. They spoke of a new rule for Arcandrey, and I could see the fervor of belief in their eyes.  I became convinced Deucalion had spoken to the corrupted sacrifice oaks near his keep. I was right.”

“I thought Deucalion was born with that destiny,” Chris said. He could not remember a time before it.

Gerard shook his head. “My accursed masters whisper that in youth he was typical of his kind, feckless and preoccupied with his animal pleasures. Then one day, strolling through the castle oak grove, he came upon his queen Kali and his master guardsman Ennis betraying him carnally. Naturally, he flew into a fit of rage and slew them both. The sacrifice oaks of Werlanden accepted their blood as a gift and told him of his destiny."

"Deucalion offered their blood to the trees?" Chris asked, shocked. All gave prayers and some gave peaceable offerings to the Green and Silver, but to make a living sacrifice was the highest crime imaginable in either country.

"Yes, and when they rewarded him, I knew that I must do the same," Gerard said. "Yet the force of his emotion fed the trees in a way I could not imitate. I asked the grove in the Arcandrey castle yard what they would accept instead.”

Gerard waved a hand, and the cave walls faded to the appearance of the dark outdoors. The moon hung full above their heads.

“I prayed to the Green and Silver to give me a sign of what I could do to defeat Deucalion. Life under the Hales might be intolerable, but rule by a foreign beast must be worse still. I sought enough power to let me rule the countries myself, with the force of a mage and the endurance of a beast. And the trees of the grove answered! The sacrifice they demanded was simple: nothing but the full power of the greatest mage in Arcandrey."

Reluctantly, Chris nodded. The shade certainly ranted with his father’s cadences. "They wanted you to give up your power."

"Yes, but I knew how to best them. The Argent dynasty has always had its scholars and collectors. Our family’s wealth lies in lore the Hale creatures can only dream of, a thousand times greater than that sly usurper Deaton," Gerard explained. He paused to wipe the excrescence that dripped black from his sepulchral lips onto his cassock sleeve.

"So I consumed our library, back to the ancients, seeking a way to achieve my goal without giving up my own power. The lore claimed it was impossible, that no man could make the necessary sacrifice. But the Argents have always had a willingness to do what other men fear."

"I think that willingness is called _madness,"_ Chris snapped.

"Some might say, some might say," Gerard hummed in the careless affectation Chris had always despised. "I did learn to hide my desires from a very young age."

"Never from me," Chris said harshly.

"Not much point was there, boy" said Gerard. "You were nothing but the dross of my plan. You know how a matrix-shade is formed, do you not?"

Chris blinked at the strange question, then shrugged. "When a mage child sends out its first breath, the matrix of all the magic it will have is exhaled. The sparks and strike scorch their pattern wherever they land. If the shade of power is captured, it may be studied later on. ‘Tis tradition for the father to hold out a scrap of cloth to catch the marks when he first takes hold of the child."

"Those fathers lack imagination," Gerard said. "They lack nerve. Such a helpless, mewling little thing, stuffed as fat as a suckling pig and they never consider."

Chris stared in horror.  "Father, what did you do?"

"You know what I did," Gerard said. "You've known what you lost long before you started prattling about the value of _humanity._  You were meant to be so much more! And now _they_ force me to show you exactly how you lost it."

He waved a hand towards the far side of the cave wall and the grove vanished. In its place, Chris recognized a little-used alcove of Arcandrey keep. His mother lay senseless, panting from the exertions of childbed. Gerard waited by her side with a predatory air, making no move to comfort her.

_This has already happened,_ Chris told himself, as he watched his father snatch his own tiny form away and then clap his broad palm across the infant's mouth and nose. He raced out to the small grove of oaks within the castle yard while he chanted incantations.

The baby struggled and turned a dusky hue. Just as its movements had stilled, the palm of Gerard’s hand glowed from within with a sickly yellow light. In another moment, the light had filled the trees up to their canopy and then vanished as if consumed.

Gerard cried out, ignoring his wailing son, and stared at his still-glowing hand.

In the present Gerard’s shade displayed his palm to Chris. A constellation of wounds gleamed with the black of tarnished silver. One large mark bisected the lifeline of his palm. Several others shone around it, more than Chris could count in the moment before Gerard jerked his hand away.

"And so was your destiny broken," said Gerard, "for I believed that mine must be the greater. My power had always taken the form of ink, and now i had so much my blood ran with it.  Ah, what a fool I was. If only I'd waited for your sister!"

"Kate?" Chris asked.  "Why didn't you do this to Kate?" In his darkest heart he knew.

"Oh, don’t look so po'faced," his father chided. "Don't add this to your endless list of proofs that I loved her more than you. The spell could only work once, and I scryed your gifts to be greater. If I told you once, I told you a thousand times, boy,” Gerard turned his dead-eyed gaze to Chris, “I loved you both exactly the same.”

“So that was my destiny? Enough power to become a Royal Mage?” Chris asked. “Should I have served Derek, then?”

Gerard burst out laughing. “Dear me, no, boy. That cloggins can’t even lead a pack of thieves to commit their crimes the right way around. He’d be hopeless at running the country. No, you would have aided Lady Laura. She would have made a great Royal Alpha, indeed. Perceptive, for a beast. I’m told you would have been a fine mage adviser.”

Chris felt lost. “So they sent you just to tell me that my destiny was to be Laura’s mage? Why tell me what cannot be restored? She’s dead, and no act of man can bring her back.”

“Who said _that_ was the broken destiny?” Gerard said innocently. “No reason you should think that. No reason to think that being Royal Mage was all you were meant to be.”

“I yield,” Chris said, weary veteran of a thousand battles of will with his father. “Tell me.”

“In a way, you had it right the first time. Your destiny was to inspire and champion the slavering beast who calls this cave home. The kinslayer who has cowered away for six long years. The Green and Silver had a very different destiny in mind for him, oh yes. Nor were they happy with me when I cut it short by taking you away from him. The Green and Silver have little power to influence the living,” he said “but they can wrap an iron fist around the dead.”

“Derek was destined to need my magic?” Chris asked.

“Less your magic, more your person,” Gerard explained. “He was as smitten with you as a mage as he is with you here as a soldier. To win your respect, he transformed from a pampered prince into a righteous servant. You each elevated the other. The Strength and the Strike would have truly been united."

“But you said Derek wouldn’t be the Royal Alpha,” Chris protested. “How great could his destiny be?”

Gerard looked thoughtful. “It’s hard to say -- by which I mean, I don’t believe we have the word for what he would have become, until they invented one for him. They try to tell me, and it doesn’t _sound_ so special. He knelt beside the outlaws at the foot of his sister’s throne and pled their mercy. He ate brown bread and stone soup with the cottagers, instead of feasting in the keep. He stood beside the victims of Deucalion’s power, and cried for justice. He looked at all the kingdom -- mages, werewolves, and humans -- and spoke for equality.”

“That is...remarkable,” Chris said tightly, imagining what had been lost. He had no difficulty believing it of Derek.

“At which point I believe the peasants rebelled and tore him to shreds, although perhaps that’s just a happy fantasy on my part.” Gerard sighed. “I don’t understand why he was so important, to tell the truth. It all sounds very mewling and mincy to me. They say you were invaluable to his rise. I assume that your role was to strike down his enemies with lethal force until you ran out of blows.”

“No, you wouldn’t understand. At all,” Chris said, his mind racing. “This must be where his charitable instinct comes from. It’s his destiny, trying to get out. What am I to do now, help it along?”

Another flat stare. “You think they want to recreate his destiny? Yours? Now they have been defiled?” he said. “You misunderstand the powers who guide us, boy. You and the beast are beyond the boundaries now. Your threads have been snipped from the tapestry. You have a past, but you have no future. And yet you live on. They are most perturbed by that.”

“Really? So why don’t they kill us?” Chris challenged.

Gerard looked him squarely in the eyes. “They pity you,” he said. “You had their most favored destiny, and you have both suffered from losing it. They don’t want you to suffer. They want you to accept this pleasant home that they have made for you, with every magical convenience you can imagine, and a safer land to roam." Gerard waved a hand, and the cave was filled with a vision of the most enchanting meadow Chris had ever seen. "Put away your concerns about running back to the castle to interfere with a bad king. Bad kings sort themselves out, in the end. They only want to give you a refuge.”

“It’ll get pretty crowded in this refuge,” Chris said. “Derek seems to pick up a lot of strays.”

Gerard chuckled. “Not to worry. Now that you are together, you’ll have much less need for outside companionship. They’ll just stop grafting the broken branches to you, and let them fall as they were intended.”

“I don’t understand,” Chris said, though a terrible suspicion was forming.

“You needed company, yet your unnatural state would corrupt normal paths. They found souls who were destined for early death, and warped their direction to join you. Like binding fallen branches onto an orange tree. Those most shaped by you have been graftlings such as these.”

Gerard began ticking off his fingers. “The mage destroyed himself through reckless experiments to heal his father’s heart. Peter’s champion fell off his horse and snapped his neck at his first tournament. The gravedigger beat his son to death the very night of his escape -- it took extraordinary aid from the Green and Silver to put him on the path to the cave instead. The True Archer -- oh, you haven’t met that one -- ordered to clean a dusty storeroom, and choked to death on air. And that’s just _his_ graftlings. Yours would have fared no better.”

“Mine?” Chris asked with a dry mouth.

“Your wife never met you, of course, and found her sad end five years sooner. And those bitten wolves you befriended should have died in their attack. Really, it stretches credulity to believe that a noble alpha of Werlanden would _turn_ two peasants in a mud hut,” he chuckled.

“Boyd and Erica? Victoria? They were all part of a, what, a _trick_ by the Green and Silver?” Chris asked, growing enraged.

“Oh, don’t look so upset,” Gerard tutted. “They all got years longer than they were meant to. A soul kept past its destiny -- it can be hard to keep that kind of soul around. You’d almost think they wanted to go, even without Victoria’s weakness. They do such foolhardy things. Like run headlong into enemy territory.”

Chris nodded, thinking of Boyd and Erica, so long gone. Then a sickening thought hit him with a lurch. Slowly, he said “All of Derek’s friends…”

“Oh, dear, are they doing something foolish?” Gerard mocked. “Little pups running into the bloody claws of the beast?”

“We have to go after them,” Chris said, looking around wildly, trying to find the true cave. “We have to save them. Tell the Green and Silver Derek will never survive their loss.”

“Derek Hale has survived more loss in his life than any ten men,” Gerard observed. “Most of it brought about by his own hands.”

“Then he shouldn’t endure any more,” Chris said. “And -- he needs to know that he has the power to stop it.”

Gerard smiled a cruel, black, open-lipped smile that made him look like a hollowed-out ghoul. “That’s what you think.” He laughed. “If Derek Hale gets within ten miles of that castle, Arcandrey is lost.”

***

_Present day, the Merry Wolves arrive at Arcandrey keep to rescue Lady Lydia_

Dawn had not yet broken as Jackson, Isaac and Stiles reached the outer wall of Arcandrey castle. All three were familiar with the court’s routines, and knew that nobles, tradesmen and servants alike were still asleep. This was helpful because the Merry Wolves were less likely to be seen, less helpful because on their way to the dungeons they must pass through the Great Hall, where most of the nobles, tradesmen and servants alike lay abed on piles of straw.

Stiles gestured to the others, and held out a silver oak leaf stretched to the size of a trencher. “Take hold of this,” he murmured, “and no one but ourselves will be able to hear or see us, so long as you touch the spark.” They did so, and were instantly wrapped in silence, the noises of the night falling to a hush.

“That’s very good,” Jackson said, “but will we be able to hear them?” Stiles pursed his lips and shook his head. Jackson released the leaf and the others followed suit. “Then wait here while I scout ahead to see whether I hear Peter lurking among the throng. At my sign, you’ll know ‘tis safe to enter.”

Stiles and Isaac watched as Jackson entered the keep. He emerged a moment later and waved for them to enter, though he looked most discomfited. The other two hurried forward, holding Stiles’ silencing spell between them. “What is it?” Isaac asked once Jackson had also taken hold.

The scarlet knight shook his head. “You’d better see this” he said, and led them through the darkened hall. He stopped short before they reached the main sleeping area. “There have only been three coffins here since Peter first put them on display,” he said. “And he has kept them covered since we took his silver in the Woodlands the day I joined you. But now,” he gestured.

Five coffins now stood in a row, fully exposed. In addition to the three they all knew were meant for Derek, Stiles and Scott, two new coffins lay along the line. One, for a man of average height, was made of pale wood stained a bright scarlet. Like the other, which was longer and leaner than the rest, it reeked of fresh wolfsbane.

Jackson glanced uneasily at the others. "These were not here when I left. To be found out so near to our rescue -- it seems an ill omen."

"Father made this for a rush job," Isaac said, a tremor evident in his voice as he surveyed his own coffin with a professional eye. "No one's sealed the crevices, and without the wolfsbane I could have escaped that latch before I took the bite."

“Nothing to be done now,” Stiles said. “We'd best head for the dungeons and see about freeing your lady.” The Friar started toward the stairs down to the dungeon. Jackson did not move but held tight to the oak leaf, and Stiles jerked back rather than let go of his section.

"So near my beloved, and yet I am loath to go further, dear Friar, until you have shared some inkling of your plan," Jackson said. "She is locked in the most secure mage cell, and all know no magic can breach their walls, neither within nor without."

Stiles smiled bitterly and produced a tiny silver oak leaf. It spun and flashed on the tip of his finger like a sharp-edged plate on a tumbler's pole. "Don't be too sure," he said.


	11. The Tale of the Fathers' Sacrifice

_Six years ago, in the dungeon of Arcandrey Castle_  
_One day after the death of the Alpha Consort at the Boundary Gate_

The Sheriff of Stiles considered himself a simple man, surrounded by complicated people. The feeling had first crept over him the day that his son was born, but he found it applied now, as well, as he fell from the outer ring of the royal inner circle and found himself landed in Her Majesty's dungeon.

He looked glumly across the corridor into the cell of the man whose fall from grace had precipitated his own.

"I don’t suppose you know why Her Majesty would turn on you like that," he drawled. "Or turn on me for protesting your arrest. The whole kingdom knows how she relies on you."

"Talia _must_ rely on me, that's the problem," Master Deaton said. "She was already agitated when I could not cure her younger children's illness as readily as I should. Then once Peter’s infant fell sick as well --"

"I thought humans couldn't catch the Desquamic Plague," the Sheriff interrupted.  "It's a werewolf's disease, isn’t it?"

"The healer’s lore would agree with you," Deaton replied. He sighed.  "As a werewolf, she is not accustomed to childhood illness. When little Ivan sickened, she insisted I devote all my remaining magic to his care."

The Sheriff of Stiles frowned.  "Perhaps I misunderstood my son. I thought you could only use your magic three times before a respite.  If you were healing Flora, Alaric and Benjamin, then what had you left for Ivan?"

Deaton looked alarmed, and peered through his small portal to check if anyone were near. The Sheriff, with his own cell’s wider view, silently gestured to signal the all clear. The mage relaxed.  When next he spoke, it was in a low, determined voice.

"I break Her Majesty's trust because your son is my apprentice, and would have learned this in due time. Also, I do not like the way young Ivan’s illness has caused Talia to lose her faith in me, so soon after Rainier left the castle."

The Sheriff nodded.  "Her Majesty’s stoutest support is ebbing away. I grow fearful dark deeds are afoot." He leaned against his thick wooden door and gazed at the iron and oak construction across from him that restrained the mage’s power.

"Has Stiles ever shown you my matrix-shade, hanging in the Great Hall?" Deaton asked. "Can you picture it?"

The Sheriff thought for a moment, then nodded. Observation was in his nature. "It’s a rag, sporting the burns from a very large round strike, a slightly smaller spark, and a bumpy spark with an orange pip growing out of it.”

Deaton smiled. "That pip is the heart of the matter. Such protrusions are common on mages’ shades, taken to be natural irregularities. But mine is so disjoint it could almost be a separate spark of its own. What’s more, it looks strikingly like the seeds that are the form my own magic takes This was my inspiration.”

Master Deaton held up his hands, palms facing the Sheriff, so that his fingers were just overlapping, to mime the second spark and its protrusion.

He continued. “When I first understood that Talia might need a running stream of my power to steady her, I put much thought into how I might do so. In my mind I turned my sparks all around to study them. Doing this, I realized what no mage ever had. Viewed from just the right angle the “pip” really was a separate spark.”

The mage rotated both hands ninety degrees so his palms faced the floor and the Sheriff could see that his fingers did not actually touch.

The Sheriff of Stiles was skeptical. “I thought all mages were besotted with their own magic,” he said. “Why did no one know this before?”

Master Deaton smiled thinly. “The mental explorations are quite arduous, and the small spark reluctant to separate," he said. “The first time I drew upon it for enough force to blow a dandelion, I felt a searing pain and fell unconscious for three days. Happily, in time I mastered the power. My fourth spark has burned for Talia alone until this morning, when she bade me to dedicate it to Ivan, instead."

The Sheriff nodded. "And now she suffers its loss."

"Without it, the wild moods I sought to assuage have compromised her judgment. Friar Kate told the Royal Alpha of her own distrust in me, and here we are.”

"Thanks to his child’s illness, Peter and his mage stand nearer the throne than ever before," the Sheriff mused. "You don’t suppose..."

Deaton spread his hands helplessly. "Peter has always craved power, but I would not have believed this of him. It has been difficult for him to accept his son’s condition, though.”

"An incurable case of humanity,” the Sheriff agreed.

“He has traveled much since Ivan was born, even crossing into Werlanden,” Deaton mused. “I do not know what he hoped to find there, besides our enemies. An Alpha’s bite is deadly to a wolf’s human child.”

“Perhaps he wasn’t looking for a cure,” the Sheriff said. “I have heard rumors that --”

But he could not finish his thought, for a short, scrawny flash of silver cassock had darted down the stairs into the dungeon and stood panting in the corridor between their two cells. The Sheriff groaned to see that his twelve-year-old son could not leave his father and master to cope with their peril in peace.

“They’re closing up the keep!” Stiles gasped. “Her Majesty says that if the Desquamic Plague can infect humans, then everyone needs to stay out. The great doors are locked. Lord Peter’s picked a few servants to stay behind, but even the guards have gone.”

“And did he pick you?” the Sheriff sighed.

“No, sir!” Stiles said, beaming proudly. “But I couldn’t leave you down here, when trouble could be coming.”

“Trouble may be here,” Deaton said, worried. “Stiles, what did Lord Peter do with the younger servants?”

Stiles shifted from one foot to the other, a sure sign he dreaded giving bad news. “Most of the pages are in the yard, and his new squire’s rode off to warn the outlying villages. But Master --” his shoulders slumped, “he kept Scott behind to serve the family supper.”

The Sheriff could see Deaton was badly shaken by the news. The childless Royal Mage had been fond of the orphaned page ever since he had brought the lad to the castle to train for service. No father would want his son exposed to such danger, as the Sheriff knew all too well.

“If Peter is acting against you somehow,” he mused, ignoring Stiles’ gasp, “it makes sense that he would ensnare your ward, as well.”

“Or there may be some force acting here we do not know. We must forestall this plan,” Deaton said fiercely.

“We will do all that we can,” the Sheriff of Stiles reassured him. “For now we will use our time wisely,” he said. “Son, you must help Master Deaton escape his cell."

“But how can I help?” his son cried. “My power can’t touch a mage cell.”

The Sheriff sighed. “I was a guard here back when we built that cell for Gerard Argent. The craftsmen couldn’t keep the iron and oak in balance when they came to the hinges. Look closely, son, but don’t touch. Tell me what you see.”

Stiles leaned forward and peered at the dully gleaming hinge in the dim light. “The oak door meets the loops of the iron hinge, but there are gaps in between. I can see the black of the iron pin between the spaces.”

“That is not iron,” the Sheriff declared. “It would not balance. The pins are seasoned ash, treated to resemble iron, but still only wood. Now Stiles, you remember that prank you played on your former master, don’t you? Slicing the bands of his saddle while he was still in it, without alarming his poor horse?”

Stiles grinned and nodded. “Friar Harris looked so shocked on the way down."

“For once, your mischief will serve you well,” his father said. “Be sure to use your strike, not your spark.” Both mages looked perplexed by the last direction, but within moments Stiles was sawing carefully through the wooden pins with a delicate spinning oak leaf perched on the end of his finger.

“Use a fine hand, so you do not touch the oak,” Deaton coached. He looked across at the Sheriff and arched an eyebrow. “I have often found Stiles’ strike, though exceptionally large, to be more erratic than his spark,” he remarked. “Almost as if the strike holds more power than he can contain.”

The Sheriff nodded. “Believe me, the cottage walls in our home county of Stiles bear the scorch marks to prove it,” he said. He reached beneath his shirt and pulled out a small wooden capsule, fitted as tightly as if it were whole. “I have borne this over my heart since the first day I held my child in my arms. Son, hold a moment and take this over to your master.”

Stiles paused, the little oakleaf blade still spinning. “My matrix-shade? There’s little to see, only a strike and a spark.”

“Humor me,” the Sheriff said, “and then get back to your work.” He watched as Master Deaton accepted the box and spread open its contents. He smiled grimly at the moment the mage’s eyes bulged in astonishment.

“Stiles, when you were born, you were the most wondrous thing I’d ever seen.” His son grinned shyly at the praise.

“There’d been no mage born to our family so far back as memory,” the Sheriff recalled, smiling softly. “I might have guessed you'd make a grand entrance, but we’d only just met. The midwife handed you to me, sticky and purple. Purple, because you weren’t breathing.” He shuddered at the memory. “I asked her what to do, but she only looked fearful.”

Stiles, nearly finished, put aside his sawing for a moment to watch his father in horrified fascination. “You never told me that,” he said.

His father nodded. “Your mouth was open, but you hadn’t made a sound. I didn’t know what to do, so I -- “ the Sheriff hooked a finger into his own mouth and mimed tugging it out to demonstrate. “I thought maybe something was lodged inside that I could clear away. There was,” he said, and held up his pointer finger to show the two mages the deep silvery scar that twined thickly all around it. “And it burned like starlight. Son, you were so full of magic you were choking on it.”

“What did you do?” Stiles whispered.

“The only thing I could imagine,” he said. “I threw you over my shoulder and thumped you on the back. I was terrified I’d break you, and terrified you’d die.” The Sheriff smiled. “Luckily it only took two sound whacks before you puked all that mess of starlight right between my shoulders. And that’s where it landed,” he said, nodding to the matrix-shade in Deaton’s hands. “That’s from the tabard I was wearing that day.” He waited while Deaton passed the black linen bleached with two large white patches through the bars, so Stiles could see it.

“I could feel it happen. The first thump got the mass we call your strike spilling out of you. I didn’t know what it was. I could feel the power wriggling down my back in pieces, yet all crowded together, like glow-worms massed in a pile. Another thump, and you belched out a second wad that came out in one piece. And then you drew your first breath, and you heaved out a wail, and it was the most beautiful sound I ever heard in my life,” the Sheriff said, unashamed of his tears.

Stiles tore across the corridor to him and pressed his hand through the grating to stroke his father’s cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for saving me.”

He clasped his son’s hand against him for a long moment. “You can thank me by getting your master out of that cell,” the Sheriff told him warmly, and Stiles scampered back to work on the last jointure of the bottom hinge. At Deaton’s shout of warning the boy jumped back the moment the last pin was cut through, and the heavy oak and iron door crashed to the stone floor.

“But what does it mean?” Stiles asked. “What does it mean if my strike is made of a jumble?”

Deaton stepped out of his cell, careful to avoid the fallen door, his face drawn with equal parts grim wariness and wonder. “It is not your strike. You have a massive number of sparks, piled like leaves on the forest floor, more thickly than I can count. If you can learn to separate them, you could be the greatest mage of a thousand years."

Stiles whipped around on his father. “You knew, yet you made me waste them all at once on Master Deaton’s cell. Why? Now I only have my true strike to get you out,” he said.

“No!” the Sheriff of Stiles shouted. "I did not want you to injure yourself on the attempt. The hinges on my cell are iron straight through; you do not have the force to shift them. You and Master Deaton must save your remaining strength for your escape. I'll bide here for now. You can release me later.”

“I won't leave you!” Stiles declared, looking mutinous. His hands were clenched in tight fists as if he would fight for the right to remain.

As the Sheriff opened his mouth to respond, the group was disturbed by another small figure pelting down the stairs. “Master Deaton! Oh, Master Deaton, he’s killed her!” Scott cried. “Her Majesty is dead.”

Over the heads of the frantic boys, the two fathers, one related by blood and one by heart, passed a speaking glance. At all costs, the innocent must be saved. “Lord Peter has killed the Royal Alpha?” Deaton asked.

“No, Master,” Scott snuffled. “Lord Derek.”


	12. Hale Derek, Tried by Fire

_Present day. After dreaming of his father, Chris awakens in Derek's cave._

When Chris awoke after his dream of Gerard, he looked muzzily around himself at the light spread in the unaccustomed space. Gazing up, he could see the gray stone of the cave wall high above his head. From the glimpse he’d had of the great rock that housed the cave, he thought the actual space of the cavern must extend far underground to be so large. Looking around, he could see that the interior stretched beyond what he could perceive.

The near interior was unchanged, with the stone table and fire pit still visible. He had cast Kate’s wine-colored stone into the open fire pit to reveal the truth, and he fancied he could see the stone still glowing deep within the coals. The open, hollow sound of the cave confused him, but he could not work out why.

Derek lay crumpled some distance beyond him, a sight that caused Chris to cry out as he lurched over to the other man and rested his head in his lap. After all Chris had learned, the unconscious Derek looked young, and vulnerable, and dear. He saw the red cord around Derek’s neck, and realized that the werewolf still wore Chris’s own silver arrow beneath his clothing. Before the dream Chris might have snatched it back from him. Now he decided to let Derek wear it for whatever reassurance it might provide.

Suddenly, Chris realized what was wrong with the sound, and turned to look at the mouth of the cave where the wall of water was silent. He stared dumbly at the dry, ordinary arch of rock that opened the cave to the outdoors, letting in the ray of first light. There was no sign of bridges or white water, just the river running below a wide shelf of rock. Instead sunlight streamed in, dappled with shade from the leaves of the island’s great sacrifice oak.

For a long moment Chris wondered what to think. The magic cave was strange and foreboding, but it had also offered protection, a stone carapace that shielded Derek from the hurts of the world. Chris was helpless to restore it, and uncertain that it should be restored. Chris had come to Derek’s lair seeking answers. But every turn seemed to reveal new truths that were only more confusing.

Under his hand, Derek began to tremble, his sleeping face twisting with alarm. The water rose as if in reply to cover the cave mouth, first with a trickle and then with a roar. With a final shudder Derek settled, and Chris gazed down with gladness to see his friend slowly coming back to himself.

Derek opened his eyes. His gaze darted sharply to the water now thundering down, and around the cavern before landing on the man kneeling over him. Wetting dry lips he murmured “Chris? What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been unconscious, like you, until a few minutes ago,” Chris explained. “I believe we’ve both slept into morning. Did you have any visions, as I did? I saw many tales of the Merry Wolves, Derek. And I saw my father, who told me of our stolen destiny.”

“Father?” Derek ran taut fingers through his own hair, harshly stroking it back from the temple. “Gerard spoke of destiny? What did he say?”

"He told me that a great wrong had been done to you.  And he told me the culprit.”

"Who?" Derek asked, looking alarmed.

"I was," Chris said sorrowfully. "My father and Deucalion most of all, in truth. But he told me you could not achieve your true destiny because I was not at your side."

"I see. But none of that matters now, of course," Derek said briskly while sitting up. "We're enemies.  I almost killed you yesterday, remember."

Chris looked on Derek with a warm light. "We were never enemies. In the visions I saw you as I have not seen before. Indeed, I believe we have been drawn together throughout our lives, in spite of the divisions forced upon us. I have seen enough of your goodness, and the possibilities within you, to have no doubt of my feelings. Can you say the same of me?" He felt himself falling into Derek’s wide-eyed gaze, and lay a hand on the younger man’s shoulder to steady himself.    

Instantly the werewolf drew away in shock, a retreat that may have been comical had Chris’s heart not stuttered to a halt. "You saw visions of me that made you _desire_ me?" he asked, shaking his head. "The visions I had of you were far less persuasive."

"What do you mean?" Chris asked, hurt.

Derek shrugged, then turned to face him squarely. "I know that you murdered your wife."

Numb, Chris could only shake his head. “How can you think that?” he asked.

"Ah, you cannot deceive me, Christopher, for I saw it all," Derek  chided. "Twas late at night, and you brought your wife a drink. Then when she began to rumble and choke from the foul poison in it you showed no care for her but ran instead to your daughter in gladness."

Chris looked down, unable to meet Derek’s sharp gaze. “I told you that my wife found no joy in her life, and chose to end it. I did not tell you her means. She did it cleverly, so that even her own lady's maid thought the worst of me and bore her tales back to the castle.” He sighed. “Every night I brought Victoria a warm posset of milk and wine, steeped with a sachet of soothing herbs she prepared for me."

Chris felt his stomach drop as he raised the terrible memory to the fore, though Derek only cocked his head with curiosity. "My wife both craved death and feared it. She mixed foxglove and oleander into one of the sachets and waited for the night I served it to her unknowing.” He could not meet Derek’s gaze. “Allison loved to imitate her mother and begged for her own little posset that very night. I had indulged her.”

Chris gazed down at his hands in his lap, scraping the callus at the heel of his thumb. “I must believe Victoria did not know the risk. I have never known fear as I did in that moment when she died, not knowing whether her sad condition had carried my daughter away.”

“I see. She sounds cruel, your wife,” Derek said. “Forcing you to become her murderer.”

Chris shrugged. “By her lights, it made sense,” he said. “She was convinced she would be punished if she took her life by her own hand. Instead, the hands she used were mine, as though the Green and Silver would not see through such a ruse.”

This startled a laugh out of Derek. "Twould surprise you, how many fools think the powers can be so easily gulled. You and I know better."

“I once thought that the Green and Silver must be all-knowing, impossible to fool,” Chris said. He had resented the powers’ disinterest in humanity, but had assumed they at least cared for their chosen werewolves and mages. Now his certainty was shaken.  “After what my father told me last night, I do not know what to think of them. I am not sure the Green and Silver have our best interests at heart.”

“They certainly didn’t have _his_ best interests at heart,” Derek spat. Chris was surprised by the anger the wolf seemed to feel on Gerard’s behalf. “I had a vision of the day he died in his cell. Do you remember how the Hales celebrated?”

“Yes,” Chris said instantly. “I remember. But you say it as though your family cheered his death. They were distracted; there was a celebration for another event. Was it not…” He looked at Derek curiously. “Was it not to mark your own birthday, that day?”

“Yes, I was twelve, and quite the vain little lordling,” Derek agreed. “But this time I saw it all as though I were of Argent, not a Hale. Seeing myself across the Great Hall, sleek with contentment on a day of such grief -- I imagine your heart ignited with hatred for me that day.” Derek’s own hands were clenched into fists.

Chris began to protest, but Derek pressed on. “T'would be no surprise if such hatred still burned. Watching me warmed by so much unearned affection, while you and your sister shivered and froze.”

“I could never think that of you!” Chris exclaimed, shocked. “No decent person could. Do you not remember how you stole away from the revels and kept me company as I lay him out in his cassock for burial?”

Derek looked taken aback. “I’m sure I was only curious to see a corpse, as any boy would be.”

Chris shook his head. “I remember what you said that night, even if you do not. You said you knew I could not share in your happiness, so you would bear some of my grief. Indeed, it made my burden lighter.”

Derek snorted. “Nothing could ease the mistreatment Gerard received.”

“Mistreatment? My father’s misfortunes were his own devising, as he admitted to me.”

“What else did Gerard tell you?” Derek asked eagerly as he stood and helped Chris to his feet. “Gave he hints about the future?”

“Yes, in a way,” Chris said, recollecting himself. “He told me that now that you and I were here together, the Green and Silver see no need for other company. Your pack are in mortal danger, Derek. We must go after them.”

Derek flicked a fingernail against the pad of his thumb. “We shall, but at such distance a few minutes longer will not extend their risk. Tell me what your father said about the future.”

Chris thought a moment. “He said the Green and Silver wanted us to stay here in this cave, for our protection. That they pitied us, for what we had suffered.”

“That hardly sounds like them,” Derek objected. “Why would they --”

But Derek said no more, as a sturdy, muscular shadow barreled into him and clasped him tightly while a tall, lithe figure sprang from the darkness towards Chris and leaped into his arms. A joyous cry of "FATHER!" filled  the chamber.

While Allison covered a stunned Chris’ stubbled face with kisses, Derek shoved the interloper away from him, knocking him down. Looking hurt, the young man clambered back to his feet. "Didn't you wonder what happened to us?" he exclaimed. "The cave closed up behind us and even Allison couldn't shift it. Were you trying on this side? We were worried about you!"

With an effort, Chris tore his eyes away from the radiant young woman before him to look at her companion. He recognized him from the visions, and nodded. "You must be the one they call the True Archer," he said. "I dabble in the art myself."

The stranger swallowed heavily. "You must be Allison’s father. Call me Scott, sir. I daresay you’ve won far more contests than me. Allison has told me much of your skill and...kindness?"

"Oh, by the Green and Silver, Scott, he's not going to kill you," Allison said, rolling her eyes. "Not every Argent is your foe."

"I know but he’s...he's a war hero, and we did kidnap you, you know!" The lad caught himself, and turned to Chris with pleading eyes like a hopeful terrier. "It wasn't a real kidnapping, sir, we just had to get her away from Kate.”

"From Kate!" Derek exclaimed.

Scott held out a steadying hand "And your uncle, Derek, we know he's just as bad, but Kate’s the one killing mages and we couldn't risk her trying for her own niece."

"Who she knows is no mage," Derek said, as if testing out an idea.

"Well, true, but you said it yourself; what if Kate didn't want Peter marrying anyone, and anyway what would become of Allison once Peter found out that Lady Lydia holds the real power?"

"Actually, that's happened," Chris put in. "The rest of your pack's gone to save her."

Allison and Scott spun to each other. "We must go help them!" they cried. Chris winced to see his daughter act in perfect concert with a stranger. His own heart was torn between gladness that Allison, at sixteen, had found such a boon companion, and dismay that he himself was no longer the first person she turned to.

"I'll need my bow," Allison said.

“I’ll fetch it,” Scott said, changing to his wolf form. As he dropped to all fours he cried “Derek, my weapons, please, and yours, if you’re coming.” He loped off at speed into the depths of the cavern.

Derek turned and scanned the cavern, while Chris clutched Allison to him, locking her in his embrace. “I was so worried,” he said into her hair. “Kate sent for me when you were taken, and told me you might be dead.”

Allison pushed back to look at him. “I’m sorry, I had to continue the ruse or there’d be nowhere left to hide. Scott thought Derek might tell you, if you tracked me here?”

They both watched a moment as Derek knelt and picked up the occasional oddment from the cave floor. “He would not speak of you -- almost as if he feared to be heard ,” Chris said ruminatively. “I do not know the truth of it yet, but I will.” He turned to look wonderingly at his daughter, gently stroking a lock of hair behind her ear. “In six years I knew you would change, but no portrait could capture you as you are now,” he said with affection. “I have long regretted sending you away, but if you have grown up happy, and healthy, and strong then I am glad you had such protection as I could not offer you at the border.”

Allison ducked her head. “It was not always so easy,” she murmured, “but I have been fortunate in those I love.”

“Including a werewolf,” Chris observed, nodding into the gloom of the cave.

“Well, yes, but that was only natural!” Allison teased. “After all, a werewolf won my first love. From afar,” she added hastily.

“Another werewolf?” Chris feigned surprise and glanced over at Derek.

“Oh, nay, not him,” Allison assured him. “Though Scott considers him family, and he seems alright in his way. No,” she said “I think I did not dare to confess to you my girlhood passion for watching Vernon Boyd as he went about his day. Working...and training...and lifting very heavy objects. Him, and Erica both, really” she said, with a faraway gaze. “It broke my heart to lose them and you, all three at once,” she said. “Though the Martins were always kind to me. I met Scott thanks to Lydia, you know.”

“I have heard much of this Lydia, and can hardly tell whether to praise or scold her,” Chris remarked. “So she conjured the werewolf who stole you from your caravan, and you fell in love with him then, eh?”

“It was not like that at all,” Allison said with dignity. “It started at the spring tournament. There was a great archery contest open to all. I joined it because it was rumored the True Archer planned to sneak onto the lists. I have practiced your teachings these many years, and wanted to find out who was better.” She smiled “And once we got _that_ settled, that’s when I fell in love.”

 


	13. The Tale of How the Silver Arrow Won Her Bow

_Two months before the present day, at the Arcandrey tournament_

Jackson settled Portia in her stall, barely acknowledging the cries of congratulations for his latest win, until one hearty handshake nearly dislodged the meadow-scented green ribbon tied around his wrist. "Careful with that, 'tis a favor from my lady!" he scowled, then quickly ducked his head out of sight. _“You can still hear me, my love?”_ he thought, without making a sound.

_"My magic's stronger than that, now get your friend ready...unless he’s turned craven."_ Lydia’s amused voice sounded as clear as if she stood beside him.

“Of course you’re no coward,” Jackson muttered to Scott. Scott couldn't hear Lydia, but Jackson felt his protege could use the encouragement. He dug through his supplies. “Now hurry up and get your peasant garb on.”

“Truly, Jackson, I’m not sure this is wise,” Scott protested, plucking at the brown tunic. “I wish the pack were here. ‘Twas Derek who encouraged me to hone a human skill after I was turned.”

“When Stiles and Isaac return from their mission, they’ll be sorry they missed such sport,” Jackson soothed. They both knew there was no point in discussing Derek’s attendance.

“But what if Peter catches me? What if he catches us?”

“You want to win the silver bow, don’t you?” Jackson taunted. “And prove to all and sundry that you’re the greatest archer in the land? Greater than any of Peter’s soldiers? Greater than any peasant with a target and time on his hands -- any _other_ such peasant, I mean? Greater than any obscenely gifted prodigies who do nothing but practice, yet hide their skills away in far-off manors?”

“Uh...what?” Scott asked, bemused. “Yes! I mean, I want to...if I can.” Jackson rolled his eyes at Scott’s mawkish humility while Lydia shrieked fury in his ear. _“Outlaws in the woods don’t meet much competition, Jackson! Allison could take him with both hands behind her back -- don't be so modest, of course you could."_

Jackson surveyed Scott’s effect in his unaccustomed dun-colored clothing. “You’ll do, but it’s not altogether fitting. I hardly recognize you without at least a bit of green. Here, wear this.” He produced a liberty-green cap with a sharp, low point at the front that rose to a high peak in the back. A jaunty red feather waved behind.

Scott pulled the hat from his head and examined it. “But...this is for ladies, isn’t it? Anyway it’s much too fine for me.” He tried to hand it back, but Jackson snatched it away.

“Trust me, it’s the perfect disguise,” he chuckled, mashing it on his friend’s head. “The pointed brim will shield your face, and from a distance you could pass for a woman, anyway. Now, don’t fuddle with it, you’ll crush the feather.”

_“Feather? Long brim? That better not be my new liberty cap, Jackson! Ooooh...you just wait until you see Allison’s disguise. She’ll cut the finest figure of a man you ever did see!”_

_“I see that in every reflection,”_ Jackson clucked. He turned back to Scott. “Now. Since Peter declared this year’s archery competition open to all, I’ve already entered your name on the lists.”

“Uh...what name did you use?” Scott asked as if dreading the answer.

“Leofrick Bonebiter.”

Scott relaxed. “Oh, that’s alright then. Good and powerful.”

Jackson looked at Scott for a long moment. “Right,” he said. “Just you remember that when you’re taking your turns. Have you seen one of these contests before?” The servant-turned-outlaw shook his head. “Well, they’ll set the first targets at a hundred and fifty yards, shoot, and eliminate every man who does not make the bulls-eye. Then they’ll double the range to three hundred yards, and eliminate again. That’s the round that sorts out the skilled from the merely adequate. They back up the targets to six hundred yards, and the final few draw again.”

Scott looked puzzled. “And then what do they do?”

“What do you mean, what do they do?” Jackson asked.

"How will they know who wins, if they only go to six hundred yards?"

Jackson looked at Scott, mouth slightly agape. "They improvise," he said. "By the Green and Silver, if I but shared my father's vice for gambling...But we have a higher purpose at hand."

"Besting Peter at his own game?" Scott asked eagerly.

"That," Jackson agreed, "and finally stopping Lydia's prattle about matchmaking and Cupid's arrows of destiny." He ignored the outraged prattle in his ear in favor of the clarion sound of a horn, and thumped Scott on the shoulder. "Now go. That's the signal to assemble. You're in the second group." Scott snatched up his bow and quiver and hurried away.

_"Allison’s in the third,"_ Lydia informed him. _"I'll ready your seat if you hurry."_

As champion, Jackson could have sat in the royal box, but Lydia could not without exposing their close relationship to Peter’s undue attention. Instead he made haste to the open area behind the stands. All were elevated, with the royal box up high on a wooden framework which was swathed on three sides by a red drape. It was just high enough that Jackson, picking his way through the supports, did not quite brush his head on the floor of the box, until some lout above stamped his feet and he got a scrape. "Ouch!"

_"Shh!"_ Lydia hissed mentally. _"What’s the point of all these splinters if you give us away?"_ She wore a fetching green velvet dress which Jackson noticed had not picked up a speck of sawdust. A green ribbon which matched Jackson’s -- and, naturally, perfectly matched her dress -- was twined around her left wrist and tied in an extravagant bow. She was perched on a rough beam covered with a thick tapestry, and waited until he sat to wave a dew-scented lace fan at the red draping that separated them from the field. The holes in the weave were magnified like a cobweb’s, giving them a gauzy view.

_"Sorry,"_ he thought, chastened. She patted his hand, then twined the end of the green ribbon on his wrist to the matching one on her own.

"There," she said out loud. "While we're joined, no one else can sense us. I built it into the spell."

Jackson was so overcome with admiration he was forced to lean in for a kiss.  "How can you be such a natural wonder."

"Through artifice and craft," she purred. "Shh, the contest is starting."

They listened as the herald announced the news that had spread across Arcandrey. "...the prize to be a magnificent bow of purest silver, enchanted by the king’s own Royal Mage, which shall flex as gracefully as the finest yew. Yet this bow shall never miss its target, nor slacken nor break." He held the bow aloft to show the gleam.

Jackson raised an eyebrow at Lydia, who shrugged. "I can't tell if it's so from here, but Kate _could_ do all of that."

"After losing half a year's rents to us in the Woodlands, I think Peter’s wary of how generously he baits his traps" Jackson said, smoothing his hand over Lydia's where she had linked them. "Look, the first group's starting."

The archery field was pitched so the spectators could see the arrows fly down to the distant targets. Lydia and Jackson watched the pomp in silence. The first men and a few women lined up, then waved to acknowledge the stands as the herald called each name. He then called the orders “Nock...Draw...Loose!” as the group followed suit and shot. A full third landed true.

"Hist!" Jackson whispered suddenly "Peter's scheming with Kate." Quickly, Lydia waved her fan overhead. As Jackson watched, the spaces in the risers grew, magnifying the sound from above. They both craned to listen.

"Too many to tell which one he may be," Peter was saying. "Still, t'would prick the 'True Archer’s' vanity to allow another to take the prize. I may not know him in the first round, my mage, but by the Green and Silver I'll have him by the third."

Lydia rubbed Jackson’s shoulder consolingly. "We'll not let that happen." Then as the second group was called onto the field with Scott among them, she gave his nape a stinging slap. "You knave, that is my liberty cap! And I've only worn it once, too."

"Well, now it will be enhanced by its notoriety," Jackson teased. "All will ask you 'my goodness whence found you such a fetching adornment?’' and you’ll say 'oh do you like it? The True Archer wore it the day he won the silver bow." He snickered, then hushed as the second group turned and shot.

Lydia watched Scott with a well-tutored eye. "Rather ungainly form, your friend. Not much of a scholar of the toxophilic arts."

Jackson snorted. "Nay, no scholar he. Scott has no wit for schemes and stratagems. He follows where his heart leads him, but most often it steers him true."

Lydia sniffed. "He sounds a dull chap, then. Though in truth his open nature may please Allison; she's forever speaking of the code of honor she learned at her father’s knee. But _I_ could never love a man who could not connive when connivance was called for, else how would he keep up with _me?"_ She bussed Jackson's scarlet cheek just as Scott was confirmed to advance.

"That fellow in the green hat," Peter said above. "I could not make him out...something odd about him."

"He _is_ wearing the first stare in ladies' fashion," Kate said drily.

This startled a laugh out of Peter. "Of course, that must be it." But Jackson could hear the king’s heart quicken, and exchanged a worried glance with Lydia. It boded ill if the Royal Alpha had scented his prey so early in the game.

They were both distracted by the announcement of the third group. As before, the combatants entered from both sides and faced their targets, waiting for the herald's signal.

Jackson spotted a broad set of shoulders rising above the rest, and felt the wind rush from his chest.

"No," he croaked. "It can't be -- he'd never dare."

"Espy someone familiar?" Lydia asked innocently.

Jackson spun on her.  "What did you do?"

"Oh, don't worry," Lydia teased. "Allison doesn't _really_ look like him. I need a model for the spell that disguises her and I only had the posters in my chambers to go by. You're always telling me that the measurements are not precise."

Jackson relaxed slightly as the group turned. "No, it is not very like him. His features are much finer than that, almost equal to mine. That looks more like..." He groaned. "You hang the wanted posters in your chambers?"

"He must be quite a handsome man," Lydia said dreamily. She looked sharply at Jackson.  "And you care for him more than you pretend."

"I care that he truly lead us," Jackson grumbled. "I care that," he broke off as Allison nodded regally to acknowledge her alias. "Hold, what did you name him?"

"Theodoric Vitale," Lydia said promptly. "Vitale because it's a bit of a play on ‘Hale,’ and ‘Theodoric’ because --"

"It's Derek's birth name, as Peter well knows," Jackson put in, smiling grimly at her shock. "The royal family never called him that, Lady Laura had trouble with her 'The’s and her 'o's."

"It was only a little joke -- so then Peter must think..." The archers turned and shot. Allison was flawless.

"Is it him? Does he dare stand before me?" Peter hissed excitedly above them.

When Kate spoke, Jackson was surprised to hear tension in her voice, a sure sign of a mage trying to hide something from a werewolf without lying. He'd heard it often enough from Friar Stiles. "I do sense a heartfire, sire," she said in evident wonder. "But it is old and faint, and there is powerful magic masking it. I cannot be sure it is he.”

"Allison’s had a spell on her since Kate brought her to us!" Lydia whispered. "I could never shift it. Her aunt can find her anywhere magic can follow."

“This heartfire could be the reason Derek must stay beyond the boundaries,” Jackson ground out. “Lest the evil urges that plague him find him whenever he goes." He looked down in dismay at the shredded fabric and splintered wood beneath his clawed hand.

"Not sure, who else could it be?" Peter snapped. "The only question now is whether to strike him down at once, or let him play out more of his scheme. If his puckish mage has him in this thin disguise the entire company of Merry Corpses could be skittering around, and not only him and his accursed Archer!"

"If the king truly thinks Allison is Derek and suspects Scott, we must watch for a chance to get them safely away." Lydia said. "Not yet, it would attract too much notice. We'll have to wait until Allison has won. Oh, if only I hadn’t used the poster! But I had so few familiar forms clearly in mind -- save yours, of course, but the king would recognize his own champion."

She was diverted by the sight of the dozen archers who had ascended to the second round returning to the field. "Oh look, they've found each other," she exclaimed, pointing to Scott and Allison who stood next to one another and appeared rapt in conversation.

Jackson squinted. “They do seem quite animated,” he conceded grudgingly. Then he barked out a laugh. “Poor Scott, he looks so smitten, yet so far as he knows he’s making cow-eyes at Derek’s ugly cousin! I shall make good sport of him once we’re away.”

The twelve archers shot their second round, more than half wide of their marks. “See, I said so,” Jackson said smugly. “It takes three hundred yards to separate the worthy. Look, your friend and Scott were barely troubled by it. They’re already chatting again.”

They waited while several young squires picked up five of the targets and ran back some considerable distance with them. There was ominous quiet from above. “How will we get them out of here once this is over?” Jackson asked uneasily.

Lydia pursed her lips. “I’m thinking of a plan. You’ll need to carry word to them, Peter won’t suspect you. Hold tight to this,” she indicated the enchanted green ribbon, “and we’ll work it out together.”

Once the targets were set, there was little more to do before the third round at the six hundred yard mark. The herald made some show of speaking to the final five, while the crowd’s murmur rose noticeably. Jackson frowned. ”They didn’t make this much noise when I won the title.”

“You do that every year,” Lydia said absently. “I think King Peter is not the only one hoping to glimpse the True Archer. They daren’t say it too loudly, but he’s their hero. All you Merry Wolves are.”

“Not me,” said Jackson Scarlet. “Not a one of them knows I exist.”

“Don’t sulk, you play the most dangerous role of all,” Lydia soothed. “You’ll be celebrated in highest fashion one day.”

The squires had positioned their targets, and the finalists aimed and drew. Jackson fancied that he saw Scott and Allison's fly in tandem, faster than the others, landing in the center of their targets with a simultaneous thunk. Their competition faltered. One landed in the outermost ring while the other two missed the target entirely.

"They’re tied," Lydia said. "Now what will they do? The targets can’t be moved far enough to test them, as evenly matched as they are."

"Who says they're tied?" Jackson demanded. "Scott’s arrow is much more centrally centered than hers! You watch," he said, warming to his subject. "Peter’s got Alpha eyes, he'll know what to do."

Scott and Allison turned and bowed to the royal box, and Jackson hushed as he heard Peter stand above. They watched uneasily as several of the king’s guardsmen lined up along the length of the stands like an honor guard, looking tensed and ready.

"This has been a most marvelous entertainment," the Royal Alpha drawled. "Pray continue, while we ready your ultimate rewards."

"I don't like the sound of that," Lydia said. Then, "Did Scott just lend Allison a quill? What did he say, could you see?"

Jackson chuckled despite his concern. _"Improvise."_

And so the two archers did, taking visible delight in one another's improbable feats. Scott easily split his previous arrow in its target. While all gasped, Allison deftly used the quill Scott had given her to re-fletch an arrow in a matter of moments, changing its balance.

Quietly, Jackson separated the green ribbons and moved away from Lydia, out from under the red drape onto the field. His scarlet armor briefly blended with the cloth, allowing him to move out to where the guards stood and position himself beside their captain, Finstock, asserting a champion’s right to lead.

Allison aimed high and drew, the added fletching somehow contriving to distort her arrow’s flight so that it not only caught a light breeze and curved back as it dropped, it penetrated the bulls-eye of an empty target from the opposite side.

This feat won many gasps from the crowd and might have won her the game, but Scott pulled two arrows from his quiver. The first he, too shot high and slow into the air. The second he sent speeding after it, so fast that it penetrated the slower arrow in the middle of its shaft mid-flight, and the two joined arrows came tumbling down. The crowd was stunned into silence.

_"Come on Allison, i know you can beat that,"_ Lydia  urged, unseen beneath the stands. Jackson grinned

As fast as lightning, Allison drew her final arrow. It raced through the sky, gleaming strangely in the light. _"She's drawn her silver arrow,"_ Lydia informed Jackson. _"This will end the match, ‘tis certain. Get ready."_ Jackson moved subtly so he stood in front of Finstock, taking the place of the leader.

The bolts that Scott had conjoined like thread and needle-eye tumbled ungainly toward the ground. Like a bird of prey, Allison’s arrow snatched them from the sky. As if undaunted by the weight, her shot carried Scott’s down across the field, straight into the target.

When they landed, the crowd roared. Allison’s arrow had once again landed solidly in the bulls-eye. All could see that it had not only landed true, but.pinioned Scott’s arrows precisely where one had bisected the other.

Scott’s arrows formed a dark 'x' whose intersection was perfectly centered across the bulls-eye, fixed exactly in that spot by Allison Argent's silver arrow.

The crowd burst into thunderous applause and even Scott was cheering, hugging Allison, thumping 'his' broad back, and laughing with delight and amazement.

The two victors turned eagerly back to the cheering crowd, unaware of the extent of their danger until Jackson caught Scott’s eye. Sensing movement from the guards, the scarlet knight moved forward in haste and caught each archer’s arms, looking straight at Peter in his royal box as he did so. To them, he murmured “Good work. Now, do only as I say and we’ll all get out of here.”

_“Hold them there until my signal,”_ Lydia told him.

Jackson looked up and caught Peter’s eye. “The victor is...Theodoric Vitale, Your Majesty. How would you reward him?”

Peter raised the silver bow. “You have certainly provided a splendid show, and I must give you your due. Therefore, Commander Finstock, I order you: Arrest this man, and his accomplice, for they are the True Archer and one of his criminal pack!”

There were gasps from the crowd. And some boos, Jackson noticed, but they were quickly stifled as Peter turned threateningly toward the noise.

Jackson realized that Peter could not name his suspicions of who “Theodoric Vitale” really was, and risk confirming them to his audience. The populace still believed Derek dead, and revealing him as a heroic outlaw would not help Peter’s cause.

Finstock moved forward to Allison, then jumped back in shock. Under his hand, Jackson felt the bulk of 'Theodoric’s' arm suddenly winnow away. The crowd roared with astonishment.

_“It’ll be alright, I promise,”_ Lydia told him. _“He’ll know she’s not a Merry Wolf, now.”_

_“But Scott is!”_ Jackson thought urgently. _“How will we get him away?”_

King Peter was staring at Allison, stunned. The rough clothing she’d worn as Theodoric only set her beauty off further, Jackson thought, and then flinched at a mental jab from Lydia. “Milady, who are you? Explain yourself!”

Allison glanced up at her aunt and then to Lydia’s hiding place. _“She dare not lie to him, more’s the pity. The crowd’s gone too quiet.”_ Jackson tried to give Allison an encouraging smile. “Just tell him the truth,” he coaxed. Allison nodded.

“I am Allison of Argent,” she said tremulously. “A maid of Arcandrey who shelters in the House of Martin. I joined the games today to test my skills, but I did not wish to gain notoriety.”

Peter chuckled indulgently. “It is too late for that,” he said. “So you have no knowledge of this knave who you have bested? The outlaw some call the True Archer? A false archer indeed, I should say, now that you have shown him his true place! But how came you by such splendid magic?”

Jackson winced to see the avarice in Peter’s eye. He could not see how Lydia could avoid exposure.

_“I’m sorry, Jackson, this is the only way. I have to use a model I know. You’ll think of something.”_ Before Jackson could ask what she meant, he felt Lydia go silent in his head as her last spark burned. He groaned to feel Scott’s arm shrinking under his, into a size he knew all too well. He hardly dared to turn to see Lydia beside him, in peasant brown, her liberty cap still perched jauntily on her head.

Allison’s eyes grew large as she comprehended. She spoke quickly, to mask her lie in the noise of the crowd, Jackson thought approvingly. “Nay, Your Majesty, this is not the True Archer. We never dreamed you would think such! This is my boon companion, Lady Lydia Martin. She agreed to accompany me on our sport today, but only if I would shield her. I used my magic to craft a disguise.” Allison held her aunt’s eyes imploringly as she spoke; Kate leaned back as if to signal her assent -- or to let Allison seal her own fate, Jackson thought darkly.

“So this is _your_ magic,” the king breathed. “And the feats of archery as well, I suppose.”

Wincing, Allison nodded. “In truth, we were both fortunate to achieve our places with skill. After the final round, however…” She trailed off and shrugged, relinquishing her competitive pride to allow the king to think what he liked. Despite the danger, Jackson felt for her. He knew that she had won the game with skill alone, but instead she shielded Lydia by pretending she had cheated using magic, which Peter was all too eager to believe.

King Peter stood, and the crowd grew silent. “Then I thank you for the wondrous exhibition you have provided us today, milady, and I must offer you your prize.” He held out the bow, and Jackson released Allison so that she could move to the stands and accept it. As she did, however, Peter leaned down and easily lifted her into the royal box.

“Surely a trinket is not reward enough for such gifts,” he said, beaming. “What say you, my people,” he roared to the crowd. “Have we found our new queen?” Knowing their cue, the crowd screamed approval. Mistress Kate looked murderous, Jackson noted.

Scott clearly saw the danger, too. “Oh no, Allison,” he called in Lydia’s voice. “Such an honor must first be shared with our loved ones! Come back with me to the manor, where we can prepare all of your gowns and jewels and...your other lady-things! Come home, and we will return here for a proper celebration.”

Seizing the opportunity, Allison spun to the king. “Oh yes, Your Majesty. May I please bid leave to go home and prepare myself? I would not have any say that our marriage was improper in haste. When I return to you at midsummer, I shall be the gladdest of brides.”

Jackson wondered if Peter suspected something, but in the festive mood of the crowd he acquiesced readily enough. “Return home and prepare, and I shall send my most honored men to you at midsummer,” he said. “Thanks to the Green and Silver for the gifts they have brought our people this day!” Peter raised Allison’s left hand while she clutched the bow tightly in her right, avoiding her aunt’s eye. “And now, I declare this most wondrous tournament complete!” The spectators cheered.

As the crowd milled about the stands and the field, Jackson pulled Scott beneath the box to meet Lydia again. “Why did you expose yourself like that?” he asked her. “Once Peter learns that Allison is no mage, his suspicion will naturally fall on you.”

“I have to have a model for the spell, remember?” Lydia said defensively. “Whose face do I know better?” She looked critically at Scott, still wearing her looks. “I do make the pallor of terror seem becoming, but it detracts from the glow of my cheeks,” she said, and reached over to pinch them. The shock of the movement restored Scott to his normal form.

Scott put a hand out to Lydia. ‘Thank you for saving me,” he said simply. “Return home with Maid Allison, and the Merry Wolves will repay you come midsummer.”

“Oh, of course you will,” Lydia snapped impatiently. “But who knew Peter was this desperate for a mage? I wonder if he is stepping up a deeper game. Jackson, I don’t like you being stuck in this moldy castle all by yourself.”

“You’ll stay with the pack, and like it,” he told her with a sternness he would regret come midsummer. “Now haste, we must go find Scott’s new lady-love. Or,” he teased, “your gentleman caller? What were you thinking, making eyes at a brute like that?”

“Who?” Scott asked. “Oh, Theodoric? I knew who she must be from the first time I saw her draw. Didn’t you see her form? Besides, you said there’d be a “prodigy,” and Theodoric certainly was a prodigiously big fellow. Why, he almost reminded me of Derek!"


	14. Hale Derek with Soured Kisses

_Present day: Chris and Allison have finally been reunited inside the Merry Wolves' cave_

"You fled your bridal caravan with the True Archer," Chris said.

"I just call him Scott; I _did_ win the contest," Allison replied. "I begged Lydia to come with us, but she refused to leave Jackson alone in danger at the castle any longer. Perhaps it is their destiny, to meet there again."

"I don’t trust destiny," Chris said sharply. "Nor will you, when you learn what your grandfather has told me." He sensed a quickening in Derek’s attention from where he gathered oddments by the fire. Chris explained what he'd been told, of stolen powers and broken destinies and lives twisted from their paths. "Gerard said the Green and Silver would shelter me and Derek. He did not seem to care about the others."

"What about Allison?" Scott asked as he ran up to them, a shining silver bow and a laden quiver slung across his back. "She's your daughter, and the cave gives her the same deference as Derek. Does it protect her, too?"

"Without the broken destiny, Allison could never have lived," Chris said with a pang. "Perhaps 'tis true. She may be safe here."

From his place by the fire pit, Derek sneered. "Hiding away from your own true strength. Too afraid to seize it!" Chris’s eyes fell to Derek’s right hand, clenched in a fist. As it relaxed Derek's fingernails flicked madly against his thumb, and at all once Chris knew.

"Kate, no!" He ran forward to his sister, for it was undoubtedly she who must be inhabiting Derek's form, just as she plunged Derek’s hand into the fire.

He tried to drag her out but she easily threw him back with a werewolf's strength, barking a triumphant laugh as she drew out her prize from the ashes. She ignored Derek's blackened, smoldering palm as it began to heal, so intent was she on the glowing burgundy stone clenched within it.

"Father mocked me when he saw the form my magic took," Kate purred, a strange timber in Derek’s voice that Chris recognized as though his sister spoke instead. "He could camouflage his black ink in a hundred scribbles, but purple pebbles are _‘not easily hidden, Katie-me-lass’_ " she laughed.

"Kate," Chris said, dreading the worst. "How long have you possessed him?"

"Oh, only since you opened the cave for me, brother mine," Kate laughed, nodding at the water wall. "Only since you dispelled all the lies that hid him from me. This cave!" she spat. "What a fool he is to think this protection! The Green and Silver care for his comfort no more than yours. Imprisoned in a tomb! I wonder darling Derek didn’t run mad into my arms years ago. Let’s see if the Green and Silver care more than I do if you live or die, Christopher."

With a leer Derek swept up the small items he'd gathered from the cave floor, touched them to the purple stone and blew them off his hand. The debris erupted into an immense gout of flame that burned as it sped toward the gaping trio. It filled the entire mouth of the cavern, leaving no possibility of escape.

Futilely Chris flung himself at Allison, hoping to shield her. But she shrieked "No!" and wrapped her arms around Scott, the werewolf seeming of like mind. The last thing Chris saw was the two of them rolling, side over side, clutched in each other’s arms. Then a gust of hot air plowed his face into the damp floor as he tripped on a stone outcrop and fell over, the searing flames rushing overhead.

After a moment he felt the air above him cool, and he dared to open his eyes. Derek -- Kate -- was laughing.

"You'll have to try harder to kill us,” Scott said defiantly.

"Oh, you cloggins!" Kate snapped. "I could kill _you_ in a heartbeat if I chose to waste another spark. But _them_ \-- look at them boy, and tell me you lack the wit to understand!"

Chris looked. Allison lay fully on top of Scott, only his arms wrapped around her back exposed to the flame. Scott’s arms were scorched, all hair burnt from them and charred skin repairing itself as Chris watched. Had Scott suffered such an injury along his entire body, Chris doubted that even the werewolf could have survived it.

Yet somehow Allison had escaped the conflagration virtually untouched. A few stray curls had burnt away across her nape, but even the fabric surrounding Scott’s burned arms was scarcely singed.

"Lydia recognized my peculiarity years ago," she said simply. "We could not guess what it meant, only that it must be kept secret."

Chris, himself, was as improbably unharmed. Though he had felt the fireball pass over him, he’d been shielded from the brunt of it by a rocky outcropping in the floor at his feet just a few inches high, the very stone that had tripped him. It was as though Kate’s conflagration had rode the small incline and leapt into the air to pass just above him.

“I knew it,” Kate said, Derek’s voice dripping triumph. “So much for your vaunted prowess on the field of war, _Christopher._ No glory to you whenever you walked away while the dead and dying lay around you. The Green and Silver don’t care about your lost fate! They _fear_ you, for you alone walk outside their destiny. Perhaps you can be hurt, Chris, you and Derek and my darling niece who should not exist. Perhaps you will die of old age. But the Green and Silver cannot touch you. Neither man nor fate can touch you while you walk beyond their boundaries.”

Chris rocked where he stood, scarcely able to breathe. His mind raced, scrambling to think of some injury or ailment that would prove his sister wrong. He had suffered bruises and agues before, but always recovered. Even this journey, when he believed his life over after his fall into the river -- had Derek rescued him by choice? Or had some greater force guided them both?

Kate stamped her foot, her pique comical on Derek’s broad, stubbled face. “Oh, if only I’d known this years ago!” she cried. “I would have sealed Derek with my vinegar kiss _before_ he killed his family, instead of waiting to gull Peter first. With Derek as my puppet, I could have ruled Arcandrey for all time six years earlier. Instead I’ve been so patient, while my lover ran from me in the forest!”

“Your lover?” Chris asked, stunned. “But he was only…Rainier was concerned about _you.”_ Then he caught himself. “That was your vinegar kiss Derek took, out there at the boundary gate. You had possession of him then. You murdered the Alpha Consort!”

“Don’t be silly,” Kate said coyly, and flashed Derek’s blue eyes. “Derek killed his father, as he well knows. He suckled my sweets, his every thought mine as I did my will. Why else would he bear a murderer’s eyes now? Peter depended on his guilt. Everyone knows a blue-eyed killer cannot become the Royal Alpha. Otherwise Peter would have killed Talia for the power years ago.”

“You don’t believe that,” Scott said angrily. “If you and Peter conjured the massacre, you’re the murderers, not he.”

Kate laughed. “But _Derek_ believes it, and as we know, what the little lordling wishes, he must have. The Green and Silver will give blue eyes, but never take them away. Ask Peter.” She snapped her fingers. “’Tis my own spark that has reddened Peter’s eyes all these years. I’ll reclaim my power once Derek and I reach the castle to retrieve my own body. Once Derek’s swallowed my sweet vinegar stone, he need only kiss my lips and he’ll belong to me, forever.”

With a smirk, Kate opened Derek’s mouth, tilted his head back and dropped the hot burgundy stone down his throat. In horror, Chris watched for any hint of protest, some sign of Derek’s will, but there was none. Dusted with white ash, Kate’s magic reminded Chris powerfully of the vinegar candy Derek had eaten at the gatehouse -- another purple stone disguised with sugar, he supposed, so that Kate would not give away her secret too soon.

“And now, farewell, my brother. I’m off to seal my true love with a kiss, and the Royal Alpha, and Arcandrey shall be mine.” With that, Kate spun around, and dropped Derek to all fours. She ran through the wall of water and out of sight.

***

_Present day, where Jackson, Stiles and Isaac enter the castle dungeon to rescue Lady Lydia_

Isaac had not been in the dungeon of the keep since Cam dared him as a little boy. Now he watched as Jackson tore down the corridor of cells to a forbidding oak-and-iron door. He peered through the grated opening.

"She is here," he announced in relief, "but sleeping? Hey, my lady, hey," he crooned. But Lydia did not stir from the rough bench on which she lay.

"I'll open it," Stiles said, the sharp-edged oak leaf already spinning on his finger.

"Are you sure it will work? Won't they have changed the hinges after Deaton’s escape?" Isaac asked hesitantly. Father was never fooled twice by Isaac’s own methods.

Stiles cautiously touched the spinning leaf to the exposed pin. "No, still ash," he said triumphantly. "I'll have her out in a trice." He suited word to deed, sending a separate oaken spark to each of the pins. Within moments, Isaac caught the heavy door as it fell so that Jackson could run inside, hefting it out of the way.

The scarlet champion knelt over his lady, raising his palm to her lips. "Will he wake her with a kiss?" Isaac whispered.

Jackson turned his head and scowled. "No, you cloggins, to check her breathing. But 'tis even as true sleep."

"Oh," Isaac said, chastened. He had never seen Lady Lydia before and had to admit she was as lovely as Jackson’s boasts. Her yellow gown was rich and uncommonly splendid. Then his eye fell upon an incongruous adornment -- a flat wooden cuff on a chain that bound her wrist firmly to the wooden plank.

"Why bind with wood instead of iron?" he asked, pointing.

Jackson seized her hand to examine it. "It's far too coarse for her -- her skin's rubbed red and raw." He made to break the band but jerked away with pain. "Magic -- it burned me."

At the motion, Lydia opened her eyes. "Jackson? You're here, you're here with me." She smiled sleepily.

"That’s right, darling, we're here to rescue you," Jackson said, voice soft with a concern Isaac had never heard before.

Lydia's eyes flew wide with horror, taking in Stiles, Isaac and the broken door. "Jackson?" she gasped. "You're here with me, oh no, oh no-no-no, you have to _go!"_ She sat up awkwardly and pushed Jackson towards the gaping entry and his astonished companions. "Put the door back up, shut it behind you, just get _away_ from here!"

"But -- Lydia?" Jackson cried in shock. "Why would you --"

"It's best to do as she says, my champion," King Peter crooned from the base of the stairs. "Else my Lydia will scream." The Royal Alpha wore a wooden bracelet of his own, wrapped with three silver bands. He stroked it as Isaac watched.

The last thing Isaac saw was the wooden band on Lydia's wrist char black, then light up like a small stream of daylight in the gloom. It beamed so bright that he ducked behind the door, turning his head to see a second bracelet, wrapped with far more silver, slip out of Peter’s other sleeve.

At once Isaac’s ears were pierced by an unearthly wail, drilling into his thoughts, making it impossible to move or dream of escape. He scarcely heard the cell door slip from his fingers and crash to the floor.

"That's it, darling," the Red King gloated over the three bodies strewn across the darkness. "Scream for me."

***

The very moment Derek cleared the cave entrance, Scott ran for his bow and quiver. He glanced at Chris. "What will you need?"

"A crossbow and bolts if you have them," Chris said. But Scott shook his head with regret.

"I’d have to run back for them. We've got to get to the horses before Mistress Kate gets too far ahead. You’ll take Striver, since Derek’s on foot, and Allison and I can ride Moonstruck together." Chris nodded as they hurried out of the cave. He was touched that Derek had remembered their conversation about the human spirit years before. It only strengthened his will to restore Derek's own spirit as well.

As they rode hectically through the forest, Chris saw to his surprise that they were not too far behind the werewolf, running some ways ahead. He turned to Scott. "Does he usually --" He had a passing fancy that Derek might be slowing his sister down.

Scott shook his head grimly. "He's much faster than that. He should be miles away. She must be up to something." Scott shifted in his saddle and drew his weapon. Before Chris could voice any protest, the True Archer had loosed an arrow aimed directly at Derek’s back.

"Hey!" Chris shouted, flinging an arm to throw off Scott’s aim, but it was too late. He watched in horror as the arrow sped towards its target.

Without changing his course, Derek ran under a branch just low enough to skim over his shirt. The motion pulled the branch back so that it snapped towards his pursuers as he passed, swatting the arrow out of the air and shattering it to splinters.

Through his fury, Chris thought he heard Kate’s gloating chuckle. "What are you doing?" he shouted at Scott. "If you'd hit him, you could have killed him!"

"Derek would rather die than let her command him again!” Scott shouted back. “I know. I saw.”


	15. The Tale of the Turned Page

_Six years ago at Arcandrey Castle, one day after the death of the Alpha Consort at the gatehouse_

The midday meal would normally be a crowded, noisy affair with all the pages scurrying to lay trenchers and ladle steaming dishes from pots carried straight from Cook’s hearth. On an ordinary day, the Great Hall would be filled with all who belonged to Arcandrey Castle, from the nobles to the servants, taking their repast together.

Today, though, there was a somber mood with only the royal family and those closest to them in attendance. Well, Scott thought, _some_ of those closest to them. It looked wrong to see Friar Kate sitting next to the Royal Alpha, when Master Deaton belonged at her side. Talia held her listless youngest daughter, while down the table Ivan’s latest nurse rocked him as he fussed.

It was as if an ill wind rushed through the castle, leaving worry in its wake. A werewolf ailment had touched a human, an event unheard of in living memory. Her Majesty was beside herself, raging at Master Deaton and then Stiles' father in turn, ordering her champion Finstock to lock them both in the cells. Scott tried to understand her thinking -- Deaton was supposed to cure her werewolf children, and instead Peter’s human son Ivan was sick as well. Try though he might, however, he could not comprehend why the Royal Alpha had sent her trusted mage and the sheriff who tried to protect him down to the dungeons, when surely they were needed up above.

Scott looked at the opening that led to the dungeon stairs. There was a large space before it, the stone floor laid thick with straw. Scott calculated his trek along it, down to Master Deaton and the sheriff. It was too exposed for him to creep down there now, and besides he had nothing to report. But perhaps later, he thought. If there were sufficient distractions.

Scott himself had been the distraction that allowed his friend Stiles to slip down to his father’s cell unnoticed by dropping a ewer. He’d paid for his feigned clumsiness with a clout on the ear from Lord Peter, and a demand that “Deaton’s shadow” remain inside to serve the meal.  

Scott wondered what they spoke of down there, whether Master Deaton had already proposed a plan that would set things to rights. Perhaps he could send word out to the Alpha Consort Rainier on his trip, and hurry him home to soothe the queen’s troubled spirit.

Scott shuddered. Between Queen Talia, her husband, and Master Deaton the castle was fast losing the very people who bore its weight, who comprised its righteous authority. Scott did not welcome the thought of a land without just rule.

In the meantime he resolved to be Master Deaton's eyes and ears, standing silent as he ladled the meal upon each trencher from his soup-pot. It was a rich broth full of soft vegetables and the tenderest cuts of meat, to entice the ailing children.

He scraped from the edges of the pot to gather the thickest slurry for Ivan. The baby was too young for the meat, but Scott thought he might enjoy suckling the broth from a bit of trencher. His nurse Morrell nodded her thanks. She was not the most affectionate carer, but she rocked the babe to soothe him.

Morrell was a recent addition to the court, only the latest nurse Ivan had had in his scant nine months after his mother’s departure. Peter's wife Renata had always been wan and anxious, and it was rumored that Lord Peter blamed her ill health for Ivan's human frailty. At any rate, she had disappeared several months ago, presumably gone back to her family.

It struck Scott, as he ladled out portions for the younger ailing Hales watched over by ladies Laura and Cora, that Lord Peter was avoiding the company. True, it was no surprise that he spoke with animation to Friar Kate, his personal mage until this morning’s promotion. But though Peter was normally a lively speaker, today his eyes darted around the room while his body tilted firmly toward Kate.  

For her part, Friar Kate... _Mistress_ Kate now, he supposed...was not keeping up much banter. She was hunched over her crossed arms, and barely moved her lips to reply. From the look of her, she might well be the plague's next victim.

Neither Lord Peter nor the Royal Alpha seemed to take much note of Kate's condition. Her Majesty bounced Flora on one knee and chattered brightly, in a way that made Scott feel strangely anxious. The very drafts through the locked castle doors whispered that all was not well.

Now that he had served the ailing children, Scott resumed his normal routine and went to Her Majesty, laying out a choice selection before her. She did not acknowledge him, only asking her brother "You say destiny approaches? But we are in no fit state for visitors!"

Scott caught Lord Peter rolling his eyes. "I do not think the Green and Silver will mind, dear sister," he soothed. "And if we find our fortune inadequate, we may fashion one better to our liking." His gaze lingered over Ivan.

The lull was interrupted by a hollow knock at the kitchen entrance. Ivan's nurse nodded to herself, while little Flora gasped with distress.

"Shh," Lord Peter told the child with a wink. "We must all be quiet and pretend nobody's home so they'll go away." Unnerved, the company paused.

As if on cue, another knock tolled through the space. Ivan burst into noisy sobs. Kate chuckled a little. "Your plan is flawless, my lord," she chided under her breath.

"Very well," Peter growled. He turned to Scott. "See who it is, boy, and warn them of the pestilence." He brightened as Scott moved to obey. "And if it's Death at the door then turn him away; we are not at home to his sort while Talia rules the castle." He chuckled at his jest.

Scott moved quickly out of the hall, back through the pantry stores to the wooden door that opened onto the yard. Cautiously he pulled it to and peeked out.

"Lord Derek!" he exclaimed in relief. The handsome young man stood slumped in fatigue. "The children suffer the Desquamic Plague, so we've locked up the keep. You may enter if you’ve had it before, though. Your family just sat down to dinner if you're hungry. You must have traveled a very long way to be back so soon. Is your father with you?" he asked eagerly, looking around for a coach as the young lord pushed the door open and entered without a word.

But there was no coach in the yard. Turning back as he closed the door tight again, Scott realized that Derek's shirt cuffs were heavily crusted with mud. "My lord, did you run here?" Derek twisted his sleeve as if to hide it. Dried mud flaked away as he did so and Scott caught sight of thick rusty stains beneath it.

"Lord Derek!" Scott exclaimed. "Were you attacked? What has happened? Where is your father?"

The werewolf turned on him, smiling strangely. "He fell behind me. Fear not, you'll see him shortly." Lord Derek turned on his heel and headed into the Great Hall. Scott rushed swiftly behind, a sick sensation starting to pool in his stomach, uncertain of what he might do.

Out of the deference of habit, Scott did not follow too close as Lord Derek knelt before his mother, but crept against the outer wall. Lord Derek raised his filthy hand to cup his mother’s cheek. “Oh mother, mother! I fear you will despise me!”

Talia ran her fingers through her son’s damp hair. “Nonsense, son, I could never hate you,” she murmured, sounding like herself for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and paused. Scott wondered what she smelled. “Derek, what has happened?” she asked hesitantly.

Swifter than an adder, Derek struck his mother across the throat with his clawed hand. At the same moment, the ornate silver arms of the royal family's chairs sprang to life and wrapped themselves around each of the Hales, They shouted and sobbed, some as wolves, some still in their human forms. Looking shocked, Lord Peter tested his bonds and swore. Lady Laura shuddered in her chair and Scott wondered if she was inheriting her mother’s power, for Talia was clearly dying. With cold menace, Lord Derek strode toward his eldest sister.

Scott had no power to stand against such strength, but he knew who might. He turned away from the terrible scene and raced down the dungeon stairs, the screams of the Hale family following behind him.

***

Scott was relieved to see that Master Deaton was already out of his cell. The man shut his eyes in pain when Scott explained what he’d seen.

"Did Derek seem to be in his right mind before he struck?" he asked, gently pulling Stiles away from his father and leading both boys towards the stairs.

"N-no, he was harsh and cruel," Scott replied. "Do you know what could have done this to him?"

Deaton nodded grimly. "What, but not who -- the Hales have many enemies." He looked gravely at his apprentice and ward. "Now boys, I must charge you with a duty far beyond your years. Whatever we find when we emerge" -- for none could ignore the eerie way the screams above slowly diminished -- "we must seize Lord Derek and bear him away with us, as far beyond the boundaries as possible. It is our only hope to break the madness upon him, and preserve those who remain."

"But sir, have you the strength left to carry us so far?" Stiles exclaimed.

Scott fancied that Deaton's gaze flickered, but took reassurance that his master could either take them so far, or not at all. No mage could use a partial strength; such was the law of magic. "With your strike to defend us, and the Green and Silver's mercy, I do," he said. Then he turned, resolute, and ran up the stairs towards the near-silent hall, the boys swift on his heels and the Sheriff calling encouragement from behind.

The scene in the Great Hall was unimaginable. Scott’s eyes sought frantically for a single one of the Hale children who had survived the carnage. From youngest to oldest, Ivan to Laura, all lay upon the straw in pools of red. His eyes welled and he knew he must cry, soon, but he fought his nature for a moment so as to help his kingdom.

Peter and Kate both sat at their end of the hall, still restrained in their chairs. Kate slumped heavily in her bonds as though wounded, though Scott could see no injury. Derek stood at the far end of the hall, bathed in blood. In between them stood --

"The nurse," Scott breathed. "Ivan’s nurse. She brought this about? But how?" He stopped as he saw the fire gathering in her palms, poised to throw at Peter and Kate. "A mage," he breathed.

"So Deucalion sent us an assassin," Peter snarled at the woman, "who offered help but meant to betray the Hale dynasty from within. Let me go, so I can repay your perfidy!" Despite his wolf form, he struggled fruitlessly against the heavy silver wrapped around him. Beside him, Kate stirred and from the corner of his eye, Scott saw Derek begin to move upon the killer mage.

“Stiles,” Deaton murmured, eyes fixed on the scene. “We must set them free. Your strike.”

As Scott watched, Stiles’ oak leaves appeared on the arms of the silver chairs, their color blending with the metal. Stiles made a grasping motion, as if pulling the arms apart with his bare hands, and the oak leaves followed suit. The two prisoners relaxed slightly, though still under the cold eye of the nurse.

"As my Royal Alpha knows, the honor in Arcandrey could not fill a drop of ink," Morrell said coolly, glancing around the room."To scourge your family from this earth and rule in your place will fulfill his destiny." She raised both arms and the flame leapt from hand to hand, gathering into a single molten ball, and reared back as if to throw.

Deaton and the boys had no further power to stop her, but at the last moment Derek dove across the oak table at Morrell, claws out, and struck her from the side. The fireball bounded away from Peter and Kate and onto the dungeon stairs --

"No!" screamed Friar Stiles, panic in his voice beyond what Scott had ever heard.

\-- and leapt downwards towards the cells, gathering fuel from the straw as it rolled.

Deaton snagged Stiles as he choked on grief and made to run at the conflagration. "Your father wished you safe above all, we must complete our purpose!" he gritted out, looking down at Derek. Lord Derek had collapsed after touching Morrell and now lay on his back, shuddering, on the floor.

There was so much blood spattered over the young lord that for a moment Scott thought his very eyes gleamed with it. It was only a trick of the light, for when Lord Derek’s blank eyes opened fully, they were a wide, staring blue.

Deaton wrapped an arm around each boy and threw them all atop Derek. "Away with me!" he grunted just as Scott felt a pain in his shoulder. In his spasms, Derek's fangs had scraped him sharply enough to break skin.

"Killer. Kinslayer. _Thief!"_ Peter growled, now free and striding toward Derek. "You shall die, and return what you’ve stolen!" He slashed down with his claws, heedlessly striking Scott as well as Derek. Scott felt the muscles in his side tear in what must surely be a mortal wound. Through his pain, he was dimly aware of Stiles beside him, Deaton and Derek below. Then there was only Deaton’s grunt of effort followed by the mage's agonized scream , then silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morrell's role in this story does not relate to her canon connection to Deaton, only to Deucalion.


	16. Hale Derek, See Through the Blue

Isaac Lahey heard muffled voices outside the dark cupboard where he slept. A moment’s sleepy listening revealed only his father, who spoke quietly to a customer. Isaac groaned and shifted under his covers, which had grown stifling with their weight. He tried to push off the heavy fabric, but it was woven from strands of lead.

Indeed, he could not even lift his arms from the rough planks where he lay. The wood beneath him was long unaccustomed, yet so familiar that his eyes flew open in shock. Thin slivers of light lit the space, and he had to stifle a scream as his wolf's eyes took in his surroundings.

Isaac Lahey lay trapped in his coffin, unable to move.

He struggled to remain calm, holding his breath so he could hear his father talk with...

_The king,_ Isaac realized. Father spoke with the king. And from the ring of their voices, they were in the Great Hall. Isaac counted the heartbeats. Thankfully, he could hear Stiles' to his left, Jackson's to his right, though the scarlet champion's seemed labored. At least two others -- Father's and King Peter's. He supposed Lady Lydia was still in the dungeon. Occasionally he thought another heart tolled, though as slow as a bear in hibernation.

His father spoke convivialy with the Red King while standing over the coffin he had built for his son. A coffin displayed to all the kingdom like a hunter’s trophy. A coffin in which his son now lay trapped.

Isaac sighed. He wasn’t sure why he had ever expected anything else.

"Have you decided what you will do with the outlaws, Your Majesty?" Father asked.

The Royal Alpha laughed. “You do know me, Lahey, for that has been my happiest diversion for all the years I have looked upon these fine caskets standing empty. Oh, at first I fancied elaborate merriments, slow roasting, acids, boiling in oil. But at last I have chosen the simplest, most elegant end of all. You trust your materials, do you not?” The king’s tone turned sharp, suspicious. “The mountain ash for the werewolves, the sacrifice oak for the mage? They cannot escape their prisons?”

“Most assuredly, my lord,” Isaac’s father said smoothly, and Isaac started at the dual answer that could be read two ways. But the king seemed not to have noticed anything amiss. “You have taken the mage’s will, his power has saturated the oak boards. As to the weres --” Isaac heard a distant thump, and fancied it fell upon Jackson’s red coffin. By his friends’ slow breathing he suspected he was the only Merry Wolf awake to hear. “Every side and lid is thick-hewn mountain ash. Your champion lies not on a muslin drape; he hovers and spins, pressed on all sides by a force he can never touch. Even if the latch were shoddy -- and it is strong, my lord, it is strong --” he added hastily, “he could never gain purchase to raise himself out. He lies, trapped in nothingness, for all eternity.”

_But_ \-- Isaac thought, but hardly dared let it cross his spinning head for fear his captors might overhear. He lay back quietly.

“And so,” King Peter said, evidently satisfied “they will remain, forever. When their wretched fellows come after them and I have completed my collection, we shall have a proper funeral out in the courtyard beneath the sacrifice oak grove. You shall dig the graves where these Merry Wolves may rest together for eternity, two rods deep within the earth.”

“My lord,” Isaac’s father said, and was he shaken? “Won’t they heal down there? How long --”

“I know not how long a mage may last under such conditions, nor do I care,” Peter said sharply. “But once I have my accursed nephew, 'tis certain ‘Hale Derek’ and his vile companions will waken, cry out, weep for mercy and sustenance until they are too weak to continue. Then they will collapse, and heal, and do it again and again.” The Red King’s tone darkened. “I plan to hold a feast over the site each day until the last tender sob dies away.”

“Indeed, my lord,” Isaac’s father said quietly. “May the Green and Silver ensure that whosoever harms Arcandrey meets the fate he deserves.” Isaac listened carefully as his father trailed away. He heard the men's footsteps along the stone floor, up the stairs and into King Peter’s private chambers.

Then Isaac simply lay for a moment, still trapped, his head pressed against the wooden floor of his coffin by the force of the mountain ash lid. He could scarcely even bend his fingers to feel the long, thin cracks in the wood. The cracks that had _not_ been filled with pitch.

And that was surely important. His coffin was unfinished, and so had a werewolf’s sufficiency of light, sound, and air. More important: Isaac lay upon its base, which was certainly not mountain ash. Every side and lid of each coffin might be, but the king had not thought to ask Father about the wooden floor. Isaac wondered when the gravedigger had learned to lie to His Majesty, and why.

Then Isaac flicked out his claws, and began to pry at the long, narrow crevices between the boards. With no leverage it would be difficult to find purchase, but perhaps the pressure from the mountain ash would steady his hand.

The last time Isaac lay trapped in a coffin, his father had sealed him in, and the Green and Silver had led him to freedom.

Now the situation was strangely reversed.

_Thank you Father,_ he thought. _I will use your connivance to secure my fate._

And so Isaac Lahey the gravedigger’s son set to work on his escape.

***

Chris, Scott and Allison raced behind Kate in Derek’s body, heading toward the castle. It was fortunate that Derek’s charger was well-trained, keeping pace with Scott’s mare along the well-beaten path through the pine woods. Chris had little mind to spare for riding as his thoughts raced over what he had learned.

"You thought Morrell was the sole assassin controlling Derek?"

Scott nodded. "Aye, and then others from her homeland after her death. We knew Peter and Kate had gained from the murders, but I would still swear that Morrell meant to kill them, had Derek not stopped her to the sheriff's cost."

"But that wasn't Derek, that was Kate," Chris pointed out. "Kate tells us she controlled Derek throughout the slaying of his family. You said that Derek fell into a fit after he touched Morrell; perhaps ‘twas her power that broke my sister's hold on him."

"Then that was when he took the Alpha Power!" Scott exclaimed. "I thought I saw a gleam of red in his eyes just for a moment, but it vanished into blue."

"It would not come to him while Kate ruled within," Chris mused. "Perhaps he then denied it from himself."

"Though the power permits her presence now," Allison pointed out.

"As well as the times he dared to cross the boundary," Chris mused. "She had a heartfire to track him then, yet could not reach him in the cave."

"Perhaps the Green and Silver _do_ wish to protect him," Allison said.

"Or keep him away from the castle," Chris said grimly. "But why? What fate would they wish to prevent?"

"Or allow," Scott said. "If the Green and Silver love destiny so much, and fear them who have none, perhaps they clear the path for a great destiny now.”

A thought struck Chris so forcefully that he stood abruptly in his stirrups. The charger reared with shock. Chris was forced to calm his horse or risk losing his seat as his mind raced.

"Deucalion," he breathed.

"The Demon Alpha? Is in the castle?" Scott squeaked.

"I'd bet my life on it," Chris said.

"But how could he be there now?" Allison asked. “He sent Morrell as an assassin. Why would King Peter let his enemy through the gates?”

They rode silent for several moments. When Chris had the answer, he felt sickened to his core.

“They were partners before they were enemies,” he said, scarcely willing to say the words aloud. If Peter and Deucalion had engineered the conflict...had caused the children’s sickness...incited the war...sent untold soldiers to die on either side of the boundary gate. He could not fathom such evil.

“How do you know that?” Scott asked.

“The matrix shades tell me.” Chris gestured ahead where Kate ran on Derek’s four limbs. “How much power must this possession require? Kate has one great strike, four sparks, true. One spark has gone to maintain Peter’s Alpha pretense, apparently.”

He mimed his tally, counting on his fingers. “She used a strike to reveal the truth of the cave, yesterday. Today she struck again to take full possession of Derek, so far from her own body. Just as she struck on the day she used Derek to kill his father, a strike in the guise of a vinegar kiss. She steered him home, and struck again the next day to keep her control over him and force Derek to kill the rest of his family. Each time the possession drained her daily strike, so much so that it left her listless and weak until she was recovered.”

“Was there another strike used in the Great Hall that day, Father?” Allison asked.

Chris nodded. “The chairs that bound the family in place -- even Laura, who bore the Alpha Power for a moment. And yet the bonds held. To reshape them to capture all of the Hales would require the force of a mage’s strike. Kate had none left, it must have been Morrell."

"Then could Morrell have done it alone?" Scott asked.

Chris shook his head. "She had the same limitation. The crime required two mages acting in concert. Still, your friend Friar Stiles and Master Deaton are clear, for both exhausted all of their magic on other feats, as Deaton's sad sacrifice shows."

Scott’s face fell. "I am grateful for my life, but I would that Deaton had not traded his own so cheaply."

"Oh, he sold himself at great cost to me," Kate said.

The small company jumped; they had been so engrossed that they had forgotten Kate ran ahead of them, still in earshot.

Kate had shaped Derek fully human, now standing upright and running lightly at her brother's side. Looking down at her Chris wondered that her deception had ever worked. Derek had a sly look with pursed lips that Chris had seen many times before, when his sister had succeeded at some wicked jape.

"You should be thanking me for my leadership," she said pertly. "Now that Peter’s found another mage who can help him play the Red King, he’s invited the demon wolf to the gate. He plans to concede the outer reaches to Deucalion in hopes of keeping his crown.”

“He’d give up Arcandrey to serve his needs,” Allison said coldly.

Kate grinned. “He’s given up much more than that.” She stretched Derek’s body luxuriously, still keeping up the same loping pace. “This is a magnificent body, I shall have much enjoyment of it. I understand you better now, Christopher. Peter put his Ivan to good use as a gift to the oaks, why should I not have a Hale of my own to do as I please?”

"Peter planned his son’s death?" Scott asked, horrified.

Kate shrugged. "Peter dreamed his child might take the throne from Talia's litter one day, but his blood ran so thin he could not even throw a beta wolf. After we planted his whey-veined wife among the sacrifice oaks in the courtyard, the Green and Silver gave us enough power to fuel this possession spell. His wife’s stock was poor, but it satisfied them until Derek could soak their roots with his family’s blood."

"You corrupted him," Chris said, his voice shaking. "He was destined to be a man of peace and you forced him to destroy his own family. Children."

"Oh, what a pity," Kate cooed obscenely. "To have a family, and then have it taken away -- why, I have no idea what that's like, Chris, do you?"

Chris looked from Scott, orphaned twice, to Allison, raised by strangers. "Everyone here, all of the graftlings, know what that is like," he ground out. "Most of their lost families were innocent, unlike ours."

"And Derek will know such loss again, this day, as each of them dies," Kate said sharply. "His frail graftlings will wither away, and Derek Hale will be mine to possess forever."

"If you have his power, show us his eyes," Scott challenged.

Kate scoffed but turned Derek's head away as if curious. To the side, Chris could just make out a faint glow of blue.  

"You don't have it," Scott crowed. "The Green and Silver would not give Peter the Royal Alpha power, and they will not give it to you. Hold fast, Hale Derek! Help follows swift behind you!"

At this Kate snarled and turned Derek away. She fell to all fours and raced ahead. Allison shouted a warning, but Scott and Chris checked their surroundings. They were almost at the castle. With a nod of agreement they leaned into their saddles, speeding their mounts and girding themselves for the threats in Arcandrey keep.

 


	17. Hale Derek with Flaming Blossoms

_Present day, in Arcandrey Castle, after Isaac has escaped his coffin_

"Stiles? _Stiles!"_

Friar Stiles groaned as strong hands lifted him from his berth. He felt brittle as a dry sapling, and winced at the sudden light.  "Have I been ill?" he whispered.

"No, you fool, you've been entombed in a box made of sacrifice oak,” a female voice snapped. “It takes a while to recover. But hurry, you need to free Jackson." Stiles looked up to see Lady Lydia, her bare wrist chafed red where the wooden bracelet had been. Despite his concern, Isaac looked pleased with himself.

"Why can't you do it?" Stiles asked muzzily.

"Because our fair Jackson's in a mountain ash coffin with wolfsbane painted on the latch," Isaac said impatiently. “I can’t touch it, and Lydia has no strength to break it. The oak in her cell imprisoned her power, and Peter somehow drained her dry by making her scream. I saw him command it with a bracelet of his own. Now pull yourself together, and help him out."

“And hurry,” Lydia said anxiously. “He’s crushed in there, and Isaac can scarcely hear his heartbeat.”

With a burst of will, Stiles heaved himself upright and staggered over to the gleaming red coffin. He had to lean heavily on the broader box beside it to catch his breath. He waved his hand to summon an oak spark to cut the wood, but none came. He made a quick mental check of his matrix. All he could see was dark and frozen solid.

"What?" he gasped. "I should have seven left..."

"Perhaps the oak of your coffin has trapped your magic as well," Isaac said.  "But Jackson Scarlet is caught tight and cannot even bend a finger. The pressure crushed me and I was not full surrounded as he is."

Looking fierce, Stiles turned his attention to the latch, whose wood shone black with poison. With a roar, he kicked out hard at the mechanism, shattering it. Instantly Lydia was at his side, lifting the red lid. As she raised it, the box swung open with such force that the top cracked against the coffin's side.

Jackson lay still on a cushion of air, propelled by the ash’s power. His face was gray and no breath lifted his chest.

Isaac rushed forward to scoop him out of his wooden confines. Gently, he laid him on the cold floor at the base of the largest coffin. Lydia bent to examine him, her yellow skirts billowing around her like a buttercup.

“Oh no. No, Jackson no. This will not stand,” she ordered fiercely. Stiles knelt across from her, on the other side of Jackson’s chest. He lifted one red-sleeved arm to check for a pulse. Nothing.

“He’s...Lady Lydia,” Stiles croaked, his voice shaking. “I - I cannot reach my power. Yours is gone as well. Without it, we -- "

Lydia looked straight in his eyes. Her own were swimming with tears, but none had yet fallen. “Without it, we will use what we can,” she commanded. She looked down at Jackson, and lay her fingers against his cheek. “He isn’t breathing, but he’s as warm as ever. He must only have stopped a moment before we freed him.”

“How can you know that?” Stiles asked, stunned.

“My experiments,” she said simply. “Now. He has no breath, so I shall give him mine.” To Stiles’s amazement, she suited word to deed, placing her mouth over the red champion’s.

“But Lady, he has no heart,” Stiles said weakly.

“Then give him yours!” she ordered, and leaned down for a second breath.

Friar Stiles looked wildly about for guidance, but Isaac seemed mystified as well. He lay his hand over Jackson’s heart. There should be a stout drum with a steady beat. He closed his eyes and imagined his matrix of sparks still waiting to open. Jackson’s heart must be clenched like that, dark and still but eager to burst into life. His hand moved up and down in the rhythm he imagined. Press...and up. He stopped a moment. Had he felt a change? No. Press...and up.

Nothing. Feeling frantic, Stiles began to evaluate his matrix looking for the faintest hint of power. Press...and up. There! Did a thread of dull fire glimmer from deep within the matrix? Was one small spark active at the core? If so, he must reach it.

Press...and up. The tiny spark gleamed a shade more brightly. He began his practiced mental manipulations to twist the matrix about, looking for any place where the spark might be reached. His head rang with the effort, but he persevered. “Give it to me,” he gritted. “Show me the red as searing as the setting sun, as fetching as Jackson’s tabard, as bright as Hale Derek’s eyes should be!” Press...and up. Nothing.

Frustrated, Stiles said “Oh, you scarlet varlet! Follow your nose and come back to us like the faithful hound you are!”

At this, Lydia gasped and reared back. “I have a healing potion!” she cried, drawing a jeweled yellow vial from a pouch at her belt. “It’s scented with lemon and marigold. I’ve carried it ever since Jackson crushed his knee falling from that horse.” She uncapped it and Stiles caught an astringent odor like spoiled mussels. Lydia’s face fell. “Without my powers it’s nothing but a pungent smell.”

Stiles felt hope fly away. In a thick voice Isaac asked “Is he...should we?”

“No!” Stiles said. He snatched Lydia’s hand with the potion and drove it toward Jackson’s chest. The thin yellow liquid soaked the knight’s red tabard. Stiles held his hand firmly over Lydia’s. “Lady Lydia. Think of the best potion you ever made...so strong it could raise the dead. I mean….” In a rush of panic, Friar Stlies went back to studying his matrix, looking for a path to reach the light.

And there it was! A hairline crack in the ball of massed sparks, where they were packed so dense they were almost black. When he turned the ball just so, he could see a long, narrow gleam running almost the span of the entire ball. “I have to find a way to crack it,” he muttered.

Lydia sounded confused. “Crack...like an egg?”

“Just like!” Stiles exclaimed. Heedless of the deafening roar in his ears, he scooped the entire matrix up and flipped it in his mind, handling it more roughly than he had ever dared. With all the mental force that he could muster he smacked it down against the floor of its little home. He felt the matrix fracture beneath the force.

Then he blacked out.

When Friar Stiles awoke, it was to a sumptuous aroma of oranges and sunrise. He rested for a moment where he had fallen and breathed it in, his head firmly cushioned above the floor. Eyes closed, he took inventory of his matrix and gasped at what he found.

The clenched bud of the matrix he had examined for years, laboriously prying out one shard at a time, had opened like a rose. Sparks spread out like blazing petals, to be plucked and used individually or gathered back together for great bursts of power. Familiar black gaps showed where he had earlier plucked a spark, and he knew instinctively he could restore the entire puzzle and use it as one if he wished. The field was dark for now, unusable, but no matter -- he had an entire world to explore when his magic force replenished.

The cushion moved beneath his head, startling him, as a hand stroked his hair. “Are you back with us, Friar Stiles?” Lydia asked.

Stiles rose with a start to find his head was pillowed on Jackson’s chest -- Jackson’s muscular, beautiful, _moving_ chest. Lady Lydia pulled her hand back from his shoulder and lay it in her lap.

“You collapsed just as the potion revived,” she said, indicating a damp orange stain across Jackson’s tabard -- the source of the potent scent, Stiles realized. “It’s never been this strong before. You gave us your heart.”

Stiles looked from Jackson to Lydia wonderingly. “You gave me my magic.”

Isaac clucked in relieved disgust. “I'll give you my dinner in a moment,” he said.

Jackson looked around in confusion. "This is very touching, but what was the fuss all about?"

Lydia looked down at him, the tears in her eyes now threatening to spill. To Stiles’s astonishment she lashed out to pinch Jackson’s earlobe, pulling his head toward her as he yowled. “You were _gone!”_ she cried. “Gone where I could not follow. I was frantic -- you know when I scream so a death must be coming!”

Stiles had not known this. Glancing at Isaac’s look of discomfiture, he cleared his throat. “Does it have to be one of us, or --”

“I don’t know!” Lydia said, dashing her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s only happened a few times. I don’t know how King Peter knew about it.”

The group jumped at the unpleasant laughter that rang out behind them.

“It was a lucky chance. But then, the Green and Silver have always bent to assist me,” King Peter said. They whirled to see him standing at the entrance to his private stair, surveying the destruction of his coffin tableau. Isaac moaned, for Peter held his father’s right hand firmly in his own. Lahey’s face was ashen. Stiles wondered if he was relieved to see his son’s escape, or not.

“The Green and Silver are stalwart friends. Without them, it is hard to find the help one needs,” Peter said. He raised the gravedigger’s arm as the man trembled beside him. “And I mean that sincerely. Arcandrey has so few hands skilled enough to work mountain ash and sacrifice oak, ‘tis a shame to waste one.” With a sudden clenching grip he crushed Lahey’s hand, and the man screamed. Isaac looked agonized as Peter cast the wretch down the stone steps onto the floor, then followed him down. “Years of devotion repaid so poorly.”

"What could you know of devotion?" Jackson snarled. "You've none to any but yourself."

"Bold words, coming from the very serpent at my side," Peter said coolly.

Jackson climbed to his feet. “All this,” he said, gesturing at his red clothing, “all the chicanery and deceit -- how could it be worth the price? Just to pretend you had a Royal Alpha’s red eyes?”

Stiles felt a rush of excitement at Jackson’s words, though he couldn’t understand why. He had suspected Peter was no Alpha for as long as Jackson had. Why did his pulse quicken now?

“You have no idea what my deceit has done to protect this country,” Peter said. “What it will continue to do, now that I have a more biddable mage under my control.” He raised his arms so they could see the wooden cuffs on his wrists. “A mage and a spare, even.” He pulled back a sleeve so they could all see the wooden cuff wrapped with many loops of silver. Looking at it, Stiles felt its purpose with a cold certainty. He desperately sought some escape, but could find none without his magic, which still lay dark and unreachable.

Peter smiled unpleasantly. “You’ll be slain by those you love best, my champion. It is a fate that befalls so many in this court.”

Jackson glanced at Stiles and Lydia and licked his lips. “Then do it now,” he urged boldly.

Peter laughed. “Once stored, the power must all be used at once,” he said, tapping the bracelet. “I have other intentions.”

Stiles felt his right hand rise in the air. A sharp tug pulled at his hand. He looked down in shock to see one of his own silver oak leaves extruding from his palm and fingertips, though he was not conscious of drawing it forward. Instead of slipping out seamlessly, it dragged out in reluctant bursts. He shook with chill as it flew free, followed roughly by the rest of his silver leaves, all with wicked sharp edges.

Fervently, Stiles willed his sparks to protect his friends. Instead the little swarm took to the air and gathered speed, spiraling upward as though twining through a breeze. Despite the buoyant sight he felt sick. In his entire life as a mage, he had never seen his own power taken from him, used as he did not intend. He struggled with all of his will to call them back, but he could not find the strength. He had never endured such a soul-deep violation before, as seeing Peter have his way with Stiles’ magic.

The leaves spun over Peter’s head in a dizzying swirl, but strangely, the king did not seem pleased. Instead, Peter frantically groped at his bracelet with its many coils of silver.

Against his will, Stiles’ arm rose up and he felt a foreign intention gather like lightning in his own fingertips. The sparks circled just above the golden leaves of Peter's crown. The king tried to bat one away only to cry out and spray blood from a deep slice in his palm. Though he drew back and cringed, the implacable leaves followed him down.

Friar Stiles thought he should be pleased to see his sparks behave so, but without his will involved, he was terrified. _"Derek, forgive me for judging you,"_ he thought. _"Truly, some forces are too great to resist."_ Unbidden, his palm rose toward the ceiling, his fingers stretched upwards in a mockery of a crown, and closed into a fist.

Peter screamed as the silver oak leaves surrounded his head, mimicking his circlet. The wicked edges of each leaf pointed inward. Then as one they plunged, driving deep into his skull. The silver leaves wrapped around the gold as Peter fell.

Suddenly Stiles could move again, though only to collapse, sick at heart and nearly as limp as Peter's corpse. Jackson swiftly caught him and held him up as he panted and tried to hold back his gorge.

Jackson stared down at the red seeping around Peter's head when he suddenly stirred. "No ," he breathed, in a sound of strangled hope. "He'd never dare." Isaac's gaze swiveled away from his father's agonies to the great hall’s entrance as well.

Now even Stiles could hear the sound of a familiar tread running along the wooden floor. He tore his eyes from Peter to watch in wonder as Derek hove into view.  "Derek," he whispered gladly, scarcely daring to believe, "come to claim your throne."

Derek hardly seemed to notice his surroundings. He raced at top speed toward the Merry Wolves. Isaac stepped forward away from Lydia, reaching for his friend. Jackson left Stiles to offer his hand.

The next moment Jackson was flying through the air with an oath while Derek shouldered past him, to the large coffin intended for himself. He paused a moment to sniff at the latch. "Wolfsbane!" he cried in a petulant tone. With a swift blow from his claws he splintered the mechanism.

As the latch broke apart the lid opened, a pale hand lifting it from within. Stiles hardly knew what to think as a figure reached its languid arms from the coffin. With no hesitation Derek reached in the box and lifted Mistress Kate, for it could only be she, up and out into his broad embrace.

Though weary, Kate raised her face to Derek's. "My love has come for me," she murmured, to tie Merry Wolves' collective horror.  "Will you kiss me, and bear me in your heart forever?"

"I will," Derek said. To his pack's dismay, he bent low over Kate and gave her a deep, lingering kiss.

 _"No!"_ cried a voice from the back of the room. Before Derek could even lift his head, Kate's body jerked and went limp as an arrow plunged low into the center of her nape. Stiles had seen enough of hunting to recognize a killing shot. Stunned, he whirled toward the True Archer as his friend stalked into the hall, his lady and her father close behind.  "You shall not take him."

Instantly Derek let Kate's body collapse to the stone floor. His eyes were wild and confused. "What has happened here?" he cried.

Scott approached him cautiously. "Kate took hold of you with her strike, and planned to command you forever. She meant to rule Arcandrey in your stead."

Derek looked horrified. "’Twas Mistress Kate who did this? You have done me a great service, then, Archer." He stepped over Kate's body without looking down at it. He strode over to Isaac, the wolf nearest to him, and clapped him in an embrace. "My dearest friends, my own Merry Wolves." Derek thumped Isaac heartily upon the back. Looking bemused, Isaac patted his arm.

Stiles wondered that Derek still held Isaac with such uncommon affection. "Years ago, when I was drowning beneath Kate's will, when I struggled to get free, do you know why I could never break loose?" Derek said gently.

"Isaac," Chris Argent said sharply, "Isaac, get away from her," But with a swift move Derek drew his wolfsbane-drenched claws across Isaac's throat in a gout of red and black.

“We killed everyone he loved," Kate said coolly, for it must somehow be she. Derek let Isaac crumple to the floor. Scott was in tears, Jackson was chalk white, and Stiles felt sick with rage. Mr Lahey scuttled over to his son and gathered him up, heedless of his broken hand.

Kate spoke again, through Derek. "The little lordling is screaming at me now, but after we've fulfilled your destinies and torn out each of your throats," she bared her teeth, "I doubt that Derek Hale will so much as snivel for a hundred years."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a chapter of backstory here, but my very wise Beta felt it broke up the action too much. So, if you would like a little Arcandrey ancient history (without any canon TW characters) it's included as the second part of this series. Otherwise, more action to come!


	18. Hale Derek, Lord Beyond the Boundaries

_Present day, the Great Hall of Arcandrey Keep, just after Isaac's murder_

Chris stood back warily near Allison, but Jackson and Scott were fully in wolf form, ready to attack Kate. "No!" Chris cried. "Her claws mean death to you as well." He would do all he could to protect Derek’s remaining friends.

"Most of the poison’s washed off in Isaac's blood," Jackson snarled. "If we work together we can take the Royal Alpha power from her before it is too defiled."

"But Kate has no Alpha power, only Derek," Chris explained.

At this, Friar Stiles was overcome and burst into helpless laughter. "Neither Peter nor Kate had the power, yet both shall lose it! Oh, this is too delicious."

The company stared at him. "What?" Lydia said.

Stiles clapped his hands over his mouth, then parted them to moan. "Tis not me, I swear! ‘Twas the one who did _that,"_ he said, pointing at Peter's squalid form. "And I think he draws near."

Kate, from within Derek’s body, looked over at Peter and barked a laugh at Friar Stiles. "Oh, you have grown up clever, haven't you? If there was one mage form more ridiculous than my own, I would have named your sorry oaken leavings. But you've found a way to commit regicide with them! Good lad."

"It is good that you should have a last laugh, Friar Kate," a voice drawled as a wiry man clad in Werlanden blue descended the king's stair, reeking of power.  He emerged to stand facing Kate.

"I came prepared for this battle, you know," Deucalion said.  "The sacrifice grove in Werlanden has been well-watered with my finest to clear the way for our lands’ great joining. ‘Tis why the mage must follow me, not Peter."

Despite himself, Chris was shocked. "You killed your own people, just to take over Arcandrey. How could it be worth the cost?" As he spoke, his eyes never left Derek -- Kate --assessing his sister's fighting skills in her borrowed body. She was powerful, but ungainly. His soldier's eye could clearly see the uncommitted movements, the absence of Derek's impeccable training. He had no doubt that Deucalion could see it too.

Indeed, the Demon Alpha spared half his attention for Chris, as if aware that Derek posed no threat. "The people of Werlanden must give themselves over to their homeland’s needs," he said. "So has it been as long as I have reigned. I would think Arcandrey’s greatest general would realize that."

"I was never a general," Chris ground out. "Not for the likes of him," he nodded to Peter. "Not against the likes of you."

"A gatekeeper, then," the king said carelessly. "You at the western gate, holding off my soldiers. Him guarding the east from my creatures," he nodded at Derek, "oh yes, I knew about that. Each of you rooted in place, only waiting for your inevitable defeat." He waved a desultory hand at Derek. "And now, here my greatest foes are joined together, yet so weak neither cannot stand against me. Truly am I destiny’s favorite!"

"You can't hurt him," Allison said. "He stands outside of the boundaries."

"Sweet girl, who told you that?" Deucalion said mockingly. "Was it the Green and Silver, perhaps? The ones who drove you here at the very moment I arrived to claim my crown? They've been quite forthright with you, have they? Showed concern while I drained your mage? Gave me Arcandrey's greatest fighter in this weakened state?"

Deucalion suddenly lashed out with a blow Kate was too slow to avoid. His claws sliced deeply across Derek's breast. Only Kate's stumble at the pain diverted the blow from Derek's vulnerable throat.

Chris watched the wound bleed copiously, kept open by the royal power that inflicted it. He feared Deucalion was right, and Derek's protection had only lasted long enough to put him in front of the Royal Alpha destined to slay him.

Kate flung a clumsy blow at the Demon Alpha, which he easily parried. He swung under her arm to slice the unprotected area underneath. Kate's arm dropped as though a string had been cut.

Chris saw a flash of blue eyes at the height of Kate's pain. It faded away as she regained control. Chris was in agony with uncertainty. If Deucalion won, Derek’s body would perish. If his sister triumphed instead, Derek’s spirit would be extinguished. The kingdom hung in the balance either way, but fortune seemed to tip in Deucalion’s favor.

"Even now Kate shows no sign of the Royal Alpha power," he thought. "But the proof that Derek bears it stands beside me.” He glanced over at the Merry Wolves, signs that Derek held a gift to transform others which Kate could not reach. 

Kate darted back from Deucalion for a moment, and spun to glare down at Isaac. “You see what we did to his friend,” she hissed. “What we did to his family. Derek Hale gives his strength to _me!_ What makes you think that we together cannot defeat you, as well?”

“She stares at Isaac to keep Derek’s spirit crushed beneath her. Yet still he has the will to withhold his greatest power from her,” Chris breathed. He thought of Derek’s statement that Kate’s possession buried him deep within himself, aware of all that happened yet unable to act differently. His mind raced. Was there any way to shove Kate aside and reach Derek, even for a moment? If Derek could hear him, could he act?

As if in answer, Chris's own silver arrowhead suddenly swung out from Derek's tunic, upon its red leather thong. It bobbed against the werewolf's chest.

Chris thought of the moments when Kate's hold on Derek had shaken loose. Lunging across the oak table to reach Morrell. Blasting through the pines to collide with the island tree trunk. Lifting the log bridge in the river. Clutching the headboard of his father's deathbed – oak, it was always sacrifice oak.

"I know how to summon him," Chris whispered, diving for his daughter's quiver. As he expected, it was stocked with a variety of arrows. He reached in and pulled out one with blue fletching. He checked the shaft to be certain and nodded. Sacrifice oak.

“I need your bow,” he murmured quietly to Allison.

Without hesitation, she handed over the silver bow, and eyed the arrow he had chosen. “Do you think you can take down Deucalion with that?” she whispered.

“No,” he said, raising his arm. “But the Green and Silver must know that I cannot miss where I aim it. Destiny cannot interfere with my shot.” He sent the arrow behind Derek’s ear, at an angle just enough to sever the red thong. It was so close the shaft of the arrow grazed Derek's throat.

Without thought, Derek snatched the arrow from the air by the shaft in his left hand, then caught the falling silver arrowhead in his right. Stunned, he looked down upon it, staring at the engraving.

Deucalion stepped back to gloat. “Even your own people have decided that their lot will be better with me. Isn’t it time for you to surrender to the inevitable?”

“No,” Chris said firmly, aware Kate could reclaim Derek at any moment. “This isn’t about destiny, or surrender. Derek, I know that you hear me. I believe in your will. Kate could never have caught that arrow herself,” Chris continued with urgency. “Why would she? She does what she will with her magic. Nor could a wolf catch an arrow with strength alone. Only your own strivance, the practice to catch a hundred bolts in a day gave you the skill to do this."

"Hale Derek,” Chris called, “turn the silver arrow over and see what you will see! Is it you or Kate who looks within? Look into your eyes, truly, and what do you find there?”

Slowly, as if with great effort, Derek turned the arrow to the smooth side that Chris had always kept mirror-bright. For a moment Chris wondered whether that was all, and Kate had already retaken control.

Then Deucalion cried out and stumbled back, as a flash of green lit the hall.

“He’s not the Royal Alpha,” Chris said, wondering. He turned to the grieving parties around him. “You follow the Green Wolf! Your leader needs your faith. Tell him.”

Friar Stiles, Jackson Scarlet, and the True Archer looked at each other. Then Jackson Scarlet stepped forward.

“You are wrong, Gatekeeper,” he said. “We never followed the Green Wolf. Since he made us, we have walked alongside him. We fought for him, and with him. We have waited for the day when he finally understood what he was.”

Friar Stiles stood beside Jackson. “We believed in him. We believed he was strong enough to face down any foe, no matter how powerful,” he said. “We have lent him our strength, as he has given us his own.”

Scott stepped forward. “I can’t believe you’re really the Green Wolf, Derek,” he said wonderingly. “I thought that was just something Stiles made up for…” He glanced down at Isaac, and stopped.

“A fable told to children by clot-headed omegas!” Deucalion snarled. Whatever sight had frightened him, he had shaken it off. He lunged at Derek, aiming to slice his other arm.

This time Derek’s parry was clumsy, but effective. Derek made no move to strike back, and yet he stood.

“Talk to him,” Chris murmured, “give him strength, he needs more…” Then Chris had to swallow around a lump in his throat, as Jackson fell to one knee, facing the battling wolves.

“Hale Derek,” said Jackson Scarlet. “Champion of Arcandrey. You have saved your people in battle in a thousand contests. Hail, Derek.”

Deucalion clawed at Derek’s throat, then roared in pain as Derek somehow came up swiftly and mirrored the wound he had received beneath Deucalion’s arm. Chris watched closely: the wound did not heal.

Friar Stiles knelt beside Jackson. “Hale Derek,” he said. “friend of the mages, green man of the silver oak. Now is the time for you to seize your throne. Hail, Derek.”

It seemed to Chris that Deucalion’s endless store of strength was flagging. So far Derek still had not taken the offensive, but the Demon Alpha had yet to land another solid blow, and the damage to Derek’s arm was now mostly healed. Deucalion tried to charge at Derek, who blunted him to the side. Deucalion slid several yards, caroming off a plank of mountain ash from Isaac’s broken coffin, before gingerly recovering himself.

Scott was on one knee, too, down beside Isaac, resting one hand on his fallen friend’s chest. “Hale Derek,” he said thickly. “Savior of the common man."

“Hero of the tradesmen,” came a man's voice, heavy with tears. Chris was stunned to realize it was Lahey the gravedigger.

Scott plunged on. “Mix yellow and blue with faith to make a green wolf.” He flashed his yellow eyes, and Jackson blazed his blue ones. “You made us, and now we have made you with our faith. Accept our devotion as your due. Hail, Derek.”

Now Derek fought in great earnest, landing blow upon blow on Deucalion's flank. It seemed to Chris that his friend had taken such heart from his pack that a killing blow was only moments away.

Allison leaned toward him. "Father, Deucalion gained his power by sacrificing his own pack.  What will happen to Hale Derek when he takes it? Will he take the Demon Alpha’s madness as well?"

Chris saw that his daughter had attached her own silver arrowhead to another oak shaft. He handed her the silver bow. "If we are to take this kill from Derek it must be clean," he murmured. "Aim for his eyes. I'll call him into position."

Chris watched the fighters carefully for a moment. They were turned so that Derek had his back to the Argents, but Deucalion still looked away.

"Deucalion!" Chris shouted, and the king turned slightly. "In the name of destiny you have committed crimes against all your people, human, mage and werewolf alike! Now it is your destiny to bring them justice!”

Allison sent a flawless shot speeding toward his left eye. The Demon Alpha was too slow to react.

Derek was not.

Faster than thought, where Derek had stood an enormous black wolf leaped from a pile of rags to snatch the oak shaft from out of the air.

Not black, Chris realized. Green like the darkest depth of the river.  As he watched, the monstrous wolf crushed the oak shaft between his teeth, leaped forward, and tore out Deucalion's throat.

Then the green wolf turned to his pack and spoke through its dripping maw, in a low rumble that engraved itself upon every heart.

"No more sacrifice," he said, dropping the arrow.  "Destiny ends here. All are free."

The Green Wolf returned to his human form. His black hair kept the same moss-dark sheen as the wolf's fur. Chris went to him and gave over his tabard.

"You are yourself now," he whispered as Derek covered himself.  "What of Kate?"

Derek looked at him. "I felt her loose her hold when you sent the arrow to me. Once I fought she was buried, unable to exert her will, as I have been. Then when the Green Wolf came to me, she was gone. Banished, like a purple ghost."

Chris wondered where his sister had gone without a body, how long it would take her to find some unwitting host.  That was a problem for the future; very far in the future he hoped.

The Merry Wolves gathered sorrowfully around their fallen friend. Stiles and Lydia had both summoned what little sparks they had recovered and sought in vain to raise some lingering hint of life within Isaac, but it was not to be. Derek walked to the group and crouched down; Chris noted that the pack shifted in place, already deferring to him.

"Our dear Isaac is gone," Derek said heavily. "Use your first spark to heal his father," he directed Friar Stiles. Stiles looked surprised but complied, using the one silver oak leaf he had produced to mend Lahey’s broken hand.

"We shall need a pyre of sacrifice oak," Derek ordered the gravedigger. "Start by chopping down the ill-used trees in the courtyard. Pile it high enough for two kings, so they see the smoke in Werlanden, in advent of the new regime."

"New regime?" Jackson asked.

Derek nodded. "Werlanden has lost its ruler, and we will gain an enemy unless we replace his bloody deeds with better intent. Scott, Allison,” he nodded at the pair, “I must ask you two to go as wolf and human-adviser to the new Royal Alpha of Werlanden.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Allison said automatically, then looked surprised at herself.

Stiles glanced at Lady Lydia and Jackson Scarlet. The young Friar cleared his throat. “Werlanden will have a wolf-adviser and a human-adviser -- that’s new -- but what will you do for a mage-adviser?”

“I ask you to take that role, and go with Scott and Allison,” Derek said. “You will need to practice your vanishment, so you can travel the long distance from here to Werlanden with ease.”

Lydia and Jackson’s shoulders relaxed. Lydia gave a smile of encouragement to Stiles. “I’m sure that we can develop a more efficient means of travel,” she said. “You might be in Werlanden for your morning duties, and then back in Arcandrey in time for bed.”

“Lydia and I can serve you here in Arcandrey, and perhaps your human adviser will appear by and by,” Jackson said with a sly glance at Chris. “Everyone else seems to.”

Derek shook his head. “My human adviser will give such time as he has for the role, given his other duties,” he said. He extended a hand to Chris, who took it. “Kneel.”

Surprised at the formality, Chris did so. Derek laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Chris, I ask you to serve as my human adviser, that we may lead these two kingdoms together to honor the strength, the strike and the strivance, each as well as the other.”

“I swear that I shall,” Chris said. The weight of the oath bore upon him.

“Then rise, Christopher of Argent, Human Adviser to Arcandrey, and Human Alpha, King of Werlanden,” Derek said, helping him up to the general shock and pleasure of the group.

Friar Stiles snorted at Chris. “The look on your face! I swear your hair just turned gray straight through!”

“Silver,” Allison said hastily. “It’s more of a silver, Father. Very distinguished.”

Chris looked at Derek’s hair, which now reminded him of the darkest shadows between the leaves of the great oak tree where he had first seen Hale Derek. “It’s been a day for change.”

“And sorrow,” came the piteous voice of Lahey the Gravedigger. “My lord -- Your, Your Majesty,” he stammered. “May I beg leave for a store of mountain ash, to build the finest resting place for my son?

“No,” Derek said. “Only a simple shroud.” He looked at Stiles and Lydia. ‘When your strikes are restored, you will bear our pack back to the cave so we may wish Isaac a proper farewell. Deep within its passages, I will search until I find the proper resting place for Isaac Lahey, the gravedigger’s son.” They nodded, somber again.

Chris drew Derek aside. “The cave? Is that truly fit for Isaac? Wouldn’t he want this last service from his father?”

“No,” Derek said firmly. “He would not. He freed himself from his father’s clutches countless times. No, the cave is a better challenge.”

“Isaac needs a challenge now,” Chris said, dumbfounded.

Derek nodded. “Where better to mount an escape?”


	19. Epilogue: The Tale of the Teller

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I can't believe the end is finally here! Infinite thanks to medeafic and zjofierose for all of their help from start to finish.
> 
> This epilogue makes an abrupt jump in time and tone. It's more lighthearted, set in our present day, and explores the question "If Hale Derek folklore had a thousand years of development like Robin Hood has, where would it be today?"
> 
> So, if you would like to stay with traditional Hale Derek, you may want to stop here. OTOH, if you'd like to peek at what happened to everyone and feel better about Isaac, read on.

_Modern times, in the soundboooth of ARFO, the student-run radio station at the Hale Magisterium_

"You're listening to Arcanden Radio Free Omega, Arcanden's oldest public access network. I'm your host, Aiden."

"And I'm your host, Ethan," Ethan put in.

"And together we bring you _Folk of the Lore,_ the show where we spend an hour geeking out about folkways, folktales,"

"Basically if it has the word ‘folk’ in it, we're all over it," Ethan said. "For the Queer as Folk tribute page, check my Tumblr."

There was a strangled snort just audible from the studio. Aiden grinned. "But today we have a very special guest to while away the time. Ethan and I have talked about the many, many perks of being the only two identical grad students earning doctorates in medieval Arcanden folklore here at the Hale Magisterium."

"You can imagine the proud tear our mom wipes away every time we say that," Ethan said.

"I'm not sure that's pride, dude. Anyway, today it's all worth it because our classmates at Hail-to-thee Hale U. are just beside themselves with envy at today’s guest."

"Yeah! Arthur, David, Charlene- wallow in our triumph."

More giggling.

“Well, and they’d better wallow, Ethan,” Aiden said, leaning over to turn the switch on his guest’s microphone from MUTE to ON AIR with a blunt, square finger-tip. “Because today we have one of the hottest names in folklore, manga, and soon-to-be blockbuster movies out there today. Isaac Yukimura, the writer of the smash hit graphic novel series _Green and Silver: Journey Everlasting._ The first installment is soon to be a surefire hit movie from Turningleaf Studios. Isaac Yukimura, welcome to Folk of the Lore.”

“Thank you,” Isaac said.

Ethan leaned over his mixer. “I have to say, with a name like Yukimura, I thought you’d be...blonder.”

Aiden took the mic. “For those who couldn’t make it to yesterday’s signing, Isaac Yukimura does not have the anime hair you might be picturing. He’s seriously tall, and he looks like he stepped out of a pre-Raphaelite painting.”

Ethan leaned in while Isaac demurred. “For those who smile and fake it when someone name-drops “Pre-Raphaelite”, he means this dude is hot with a capital Haw.”

"Thank you, that’s lovely,” Isaac said drily. “Do you want to talk about my book now.”

“Nah, let’s stick with you for a sec,” Ethan said cheerfully. “You’re wearing the Tri-Part Arrowhead on your neck, which makes you look like a good ol’ Arcanden boy. Are you from around these parts?”

“Yes,” Isaac replied. “I was born near the center of the Historic Arcandrey district, and I’ve moved around at every opportunity -- I like to get away. But my roots here stretch well back, and I always find myself returning to home."

Isaac shifted in his folding chair, relaxing his shoulders. "Travel is how I met my partner, Kira, and when we started the series, I took her name. She was the mangaka on the _book,”_ he said pointedly.

“Right, Yukimura Kira did the art!” Aiden enthused. “I love the character of her work. Even though it’s an Arcandish subject, her style gives it such a worldly air. It’s really perfect for the later books, especially once the Green Wolf and the Silver Gatekeeper go global.”

“Now, that’s not exactly true,” Isaac said. “Keep in mind, Hale Derek and Chris Argent stepped off a broken branch of destiny, so they don't die. They’ve had plenty of time to travel in all those centuries, and you have to assume they left Arcanden a few times already. It’s the Graftlings -- Friar Stiles, Jackson Scarlet and so on, the ones destined for early death if they hadn’t met the Green and Silver. They only leave the cave when they’re called, usually when someone tells their stories. They can be a bit more parochial.”

“I like how you let them exit the cave at whatever age they want,” Ethan said. “Otherwise Lahey the Gravedigger’s Son would be about fourteen forever. Yeesh.”

“True, and Lady Lydia would be no happier to spend eternity at age ninety-two,” Isaac agreed.

Aiden turned to Ethan. “Who do you think would be the most homebody Graftling in the cave?”

“I’m going with Scott McCall,” Ethan decided. “You only really hear about him when you’re a little kid and they use his stories as this paragon of decency and modesty. Then you get a little farther in your history books, and you find out that, okay, they _called_ him the True Archer but he’s not even the number one gun at that, he’s totally outshone by the Silver Arrow, Allison Argent. Who goes the extra mile to outshine him later on when she becomes Royal Alpha of both Arcandrey and Werlanden to create one country, ends the Hale Dynasty and starts the Reign of Silver. Oh, and incidentally renames Arcanden with the longest-lived smush name in the Western Hemisphere, very cool. And Scott’s just, like, her Alpha Consort beta who’s a decent shot.”

“He can be quite a bit more than that, but I think you’re right, he’s one of the Graftlings who spends more time in the cave. The Silver Arrow wouldn’t need the cave herself, but she chooses to spend most of her time there with Scott.”

“That must get pretty boring,” Ethan said.

Isaac smiled. “If you assume they can only sleep there. But suppose it was more like entering the wardrobe to Narnia: there might be quite a lot to do.”

“Is that your next series?” Ethan asked.

“I have many more plans before it, I’m afraid,” Isaac said. "At this rate I’d be lucky to get around to it in time for your grandchildren to read."

“Hey, Isaac, I have a question,” Aiden interrupted. “Your current series is set in the present, but you’ve obviously done your homework in Arcanden lore and history. So I’m wondering, what’s your take on the big climax? What’s really happening when all of the old kings are dead, Destiny’s paths are broken, and the Green Wolf and the Silver Gatekeeper take over the country?”

“Well, if you know your Shakespeare --“ Isaac began.

“Ohmigod. _Shakespeare!_ Don’t get me started,” Aiden started.

Ethan spoke in a low announcer’s tone. “For those keeping score at home, this marks the fifth time in three episodes that a guest has unwittingly triggered one of my brother's ‘Dissertation Rants.’ Let’s all listen as Aiden fills us in on his fascinating discoveries from his latest chapter.”

“You might as well take every copy of _Hayle Derreck: The Eldritch Greyne Wulf_ and stamp them all AU in great big letters on the cover!” Aiden exploded. “I mean, okay. We know Derek Hale was a real person...werewolf, who was the end of the Hale Dynasty. And the historical record’s clear on Chris and Allison Argent, too. Records of servants and commoners were beyond patchy, and it’s strange that there’s no mention of a Jackson Scarlet on the tournament rolls; the only victory list from that time just says “Whittemore.” And archeologists should have found some trace of Martin Manor by now, if the Scented Lady really grew up there. So it’s entirely possible that Jackson and Lydia are a later romantic addition to the lore after we started trading more with the French. Isaac Lahey dies so young, there’d be no record of him either way.”

Isaac Yukimura nodded gravely.

“But STILL!” Aiden cried. “What Shakespeare did -- you have to keep in mind that England wanted to annex us back then, so it’s total propaganda. Everyone likes the play for the creepy special effects but, just, come on. Derek Hale may not have been the greatest leader, but he can’t have been that melancholy Great Dane, either. All the murders, all the betrayals, it all just gets heaped on Derek, who finally takes over and broods sourly about all of his failures for a few soliloquies. Friar Stiles is this fumbling comic relief instead of, like, the biggest magic _badass_ in medieval history. Instead of Kate and Peter, Jackson Scarlet and Lady Lydia are the freaking traitors scheming with Deucalion like a couple of bratty high-school kids, which just, low blow, Shakespeare, low blow. Whether they existed or not, the lore in his time was perfectly clear that _she_ founded the Magisterium that’s still our flagship university, and _he's,_ like, the paragon of chivalric devotion-a-trois. Shakespeare shoulda had some respect."

"I hate the way he made Talia into this bipolar Gertrude. Talia's my specialty," Ethan confided. "I'm tracking how her image has evolved, like, eleventh century to now. She's been a madwoman, an incompetent hysteric, but now she's really starting to come into her own, share some of the recognition that Deaton’s always had for splitting the spark. She's like, the patron saint of coping with mental illness, now. We grew up around a lot of that, and Talia always made me think there could be a better way, you know? You have to do your best to deal with what you’ve got, and don’t give up on trying.”

“Words to live by,” Isaac agreed, a faint smile on his face.

“So, sorry, Isaac,” Aiden said. “What do you think the big transition’s all about?”

“Well,” Isaac said thoughtfully, “I was about to say, the one thing I think Shakespeare got right despite himself is that the Turning of the Green Wolf marks a transition from life under a deterministic philosophy to a much more humanist kind. Even if Derek had feet of clay as a ruler, he really had a heart of gold. Just consider all the work he did to equalize the powers in society and help the humans come into their own. After what he'd lost and who he'd loved, there was truly no one he couldn't feel for."

"Exactly," Ethan said. "Especially once he had Chris at his side."

"Meanwhile Deucalion is able to slaughter all of the werewolves and half of the humans in his kingdom, all in the name of a divine destiny. ‘So withers the wealth of Werlanden?’” Isaac quoted. “Well, of course it bloody withered, you sacrificed most of it to a tree! There’s something I find very satisfying when the Green Wolf appears, the moment when people stop listening to a couple of rather naive and sometimes bloodthirsty oak trees and start at least giving an ear to a human who became an alpha, and a werewolf who aspired to humanity,” Isaac concluded.

There was a stunned silence on Isaac’s either side, followed by brief applause.

“Dude, that’s deep,” Aiden commented finally.

Ethan broke the mood. “Okay, back to the book. I think my favorite subplot running through this whole thing, once most of the Graftlings have left the cave and are exploring the modern world, is the running gag with Friar Stiles meeting, like, every other trickster figure out there. He’s always been the most accessible Merry Wolf; I even had these cute little Nerf Magic Throwin’ Leaves as a kid. So now, it’s just so cool to see him running around and, like, going on a vision quest with Raven, he has a little throw-down with Loki, he pretty much had a total bromance going with Anansi…”

“If you liked the bromance,” Isaac put in, “watch out for the next installment as well.” He paused for dramatic effect and said in a secret-sharing voice _“Coyote._ The longer I write, the better I've learned not to underestimate just how well Friar Stiles gets around when he’s on leave from his Missus...and Mister.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about them for a minute,” Aiden said. “You have one of the best takes on Jackson Scarlet I think I’ve ever seen. Nobody ever really gets him. Like, he’s an asshole, and even a murderer, but he’s not a murdering asshole, and he can achieve anything he sets out to do, as long as it’s for someone he loves. It’s like, most versions either go way too far with the douchey pretty boy, or they turn him into Jousting Magic Ken doll. Like that show _One Red Scent_ that’s really just the Lydia show anyway, Jackson always winds up blundering into mountain ash or taking a wolfsbane bullet just so she can MacGyver up a new perfume and save him.”

Isaac grinned. “Actually, I happened to be on the Turningleaf studio lot yesterday for a meeting, and I overheard some murmurs about the next Graftlings comic they’re filming. You want the scoop?”

“Yes,” the twins breathed in unison.

“Scarlet. Champion.”

Ethan barely managed to cue up the Hallelujah Chorus before both twins lost it.

“Dude, that’s the best version of all!” Aiden cried. “He is _such_ a badass in that one, and it really works because they don’t dumb anyone else down just to build him up, you know?”

Ethan frowned. “But how are they possibly going to find a guy hot enough to play the Scarlet Champion?” He clapped twice. “Casting thread, everyone! Meet me on Tumblr after the show.”

“We know the Graftlings come out to play when we tell their stories,” Isaac said. “I have a hunch that this production will have some excellent luck in finding just the right unknowns for Jackson and Lydia."

“Won’t you get in trouble for telling us that?” Aiden asked.

“Not at all,” Isaac said. “I’ve known the head of production for most of my life. Turningleaf Studios has such a rich history in Arcanden.”

“Totally,” Aiden agreed. “All the way back to the twenties, right? The post-war economy here was in shambles because our only exports are folklore and postage stamps --”

“And sometimes folklore _on_ postage stamps, don’t forget that,” Ethan added.

“But then Gene M. Stallensky founded Turningleaf,” Isaac put in, “so Arcanden had a movie studio committed to showing the best of the country.”

“And then the third silent film they make is _Sourwolf,_ and that kicks off the whole Sourwolf franchise, and it should be really cheesy but instead they were so fun with the best effects of the era that it becomes a worldwide hit. They may not know us, but by gods they love our stories, right?" Aiden said.

"Of course, they broke the mold when they found Tyrone Heglin back then," Ethan said dreamily. "Those films would never have held up without him. You know he did all his own stunts, and most of the effects? David Berne, Jr. was terrific, too."

“Yeah, the effects where he turns into the Green Wolf are uncanny,” Aiden agreed. “Thirty years ahead of their time, at least. And that was with the Magehand’s Union strike that year.”

As if on cue, a light on Ethan’s board lit up. “Hey, we have our first caller,” he said, and answered. “Oh, it’s my ex-boyfriend Danny. Everybody loves Danny! What’s up, Danny?”

“Hey guys, great show. Did you see those two older guys doing Hale and Argent cosplay at the signing yesterday?”

“Really hot gym-azing old guys doing cosplay?” Ethan asked. “Making artful use of Greenest Envy and Chromeo Manic Panic? Wearing the very best in Consignment Shoppe chic? Those two old guys doing cosplay?...I hardly noticed.”

“Well, did you hardly notice how they didn’t just cosplay Derek and Chris, they were doing Heglin and Berne doing Derek and Chris? I was wondering if that was promo for the new movie. Are they going old-school?”

Ethan punched up a high-pitched shriek on his soundboard. “Are you saying they reincarnated Heglin and Berne, aka my future husband and our DILF on the side, just for me? My high school fantasy life is coming _true?_ I’m sorry, everyone, this is too important. I’m going to have to go back in the closet for a minute to process this one.” He snatched up his microphone and punched a button on the mixer. There was a noise of pounding feet, although Isaac was amused to see that Ethan produced the slamming-door noise at the end by running into an actual closet, microphone in tow, and slamming the door.

When Isaac turned back, Aiden was smiling. “He’s been setting up that bit for a month now. He can keep the chatter going as long as he has to.”

Isaac realized that Aiden’s microphone was turned off. The younger man was holding the MUTE button on Isaac’s mic with a single, perfectly-controlled claw.

Isaac glanced at the door.

Aiden shook his head. “It’s all unlocked. We figured it was better not to give you a reason to escape.”

Isaac cleared his throat. “You know, the two hot old cosplay guys are probably waiting for me in the parking lot. They’ll know--” but Aiden interrupted.

“We don’t mean any harm. We just needed to have a talk where no one could hear, and this booth is mage-proofed for sound. We wanted to ask you about the good old days. If you think they could be starting up again. We have some people who’ve been paying us too much attention.”

Isaac relaxed a little in his seat. “I’m listening.”

Aiden looked away. "Have you ever heard of Ennis Staley? The wrestler?'

"Ennis ‘The Menace’ Staley?  Yes, I've heard of him. His promoter’s a nasty piece of work, too."

"Yeah, The Destroyer’s pretty scary herself. Well, me and him --" Aiden nodded toward the closet -- “we can do this trick that would look pretty good in the ring. Probably make a lot of money on the circuit. He found out somehow, wants us to join their Deuces Wild pack. We don't like their initiation but we're not strong enough to cross him."

"No, I shouldn't think so," said Isaac. "You know who Deuces Wild is a front for, don't you?"

Aiden nodded. "We kind of figured -- maybe the good guys aren't the only ones who get called back?"

Isaac nodded “Even the minor characters, sometimes.” At a soft buzz, he glanced down at his phone and showed Aiden a text. “Looks like the reunion’s starting. Boyd’s been standing by to let me know.  If I wrap up with a distraction, can you and your brother get out the back way?”

“Yeah, the tech room opens onto the back hall,” Aiden gestured at the closed door where Ethan still chatted.

“Okay, then. My friends can take you to our safehouse. You’re alright with that?”

Aiden’s eyes widened. “You mean, are two nerdy folklore students okay with crossing the Bridge of Broken Destinies with the Green Wolf and the Silver Gatekeeper? Like that’s an offer we could ever refuse.”

For a moment, Isaac looked sad. “You’d be surprised. My father refused to cross, when Derek offered it.”

Aiden manfully contained his geek-out at this unknown lore. He stood and flicked a light switch on and off, signaling Ethan to wrap up and come out. Once Ethan opened the door, Aiden leaned into his mic, now turned on. “So Isaac, is there anything else you’d like to share with our listeners at home?”

Isaac leaned over and muted the twins’ mics. “Hmm,” he pondered, to cover any noise as they quietly left through the back door. “This is my first journey home in some time, after being out in the world again. I thought I’d share a story from my upcoming anthology, one that isn’t retold very often. It’s called 'Hale Derek, Love Soldiers On.'"


End file.
